feature
Albert Merino
This article would like to spotlight the field of creativity in art and moving images on occasion of the solo video feature of Albert Merino in WOW Jubilee 2020 IV.
Wilfried grew up with contemporary art in all its facets. He was particularly fascinated by surrealism and the way how surrealist artists were using their creativity by neglecting the existing conventions – encouraging a free development of the imagination. Wilfried was experimenting a lot before he started in 1980 the experimental working phase “WOF. Agricola”. It was obvious he was influenced by diverse contemporary art movements. In particular, he was devoted to the free development of imagination diving deeply into the shallows of the human psyche – each of his complex works were representing a kind of psychogram of the human condition.
Wilfried’s personality was characterized by a certain psychological condition already when he was a little boy, with all his senses he was scanning the environment surrounding him, it happened automatically, he recognized approaching dangers, before other people became aware it. He was observing the world surrounding him intensively and draw the conclusions for his own behaviour. Ancient peoples like the Romans had the ability to predict events through interpreting their intensive observations via a natural emotional openness. Wilfried was unusually closely connected to all beloved people even over large distances, he knew when his mother felt miserable even when he was far away. There was a kind of in-between world using a completely different kind of communication.
For Wilfried, art was always a way to communicate like that, and therefore Wilfried never liked the idea to reduce the perception of art to the mere aesthetics or the superficial how it is experienced on one glance. It is not like that that Wilfried wouldn’t like the abstract art movement, but it was for him no way of communicating – he was using abstraction in a completely different way by trying to visualize abstract philosophical ideas via his pictorial language.
The same is good, when Wilfried started himself with video as a medium, he was fascinated by making a film in one shot and found out that it wasn’t a documentary, even if the film was documenting the recorded situation – he was recording something from the world in-between offering his particular point of view. He never was using a storyboard, but developed his concepts spontaneously. When he was curating, he was always looking for videos visualizing the creator’s imaginative world, but most videos don’t do – at least from Wilfried subjective point of view.
Digital video, the affordable hardware and software were offering a creator new possibilities for becoming creative – and exactly this was what Wilfried was interested in as a curator – to be confronted with artist’s creativity and encourage the artist’s creativity – far from any conventions the “official” art world is dictating.
To come finally to Albert Merino, according to Wilfried’s experiences he was one of the first submitting artists who was diving deeply into imagination the way many surrealist artists did.
Wilfried is estimating an artist not according one single video, but, if he gets the chance according to the works over a longer creation period. In Albert’s case- the film “The City and the Other” did not only fit into CologneOFF VII – Art & the City in 2011 , but Albert’s promising talent was confirmed by the next following videos, so this 1st video was no artistic co-incidence, like it happens mostly, but the following videos were confirming, that they were not just an impressive compositions of visual effects, and the visual effects were not applied for their own sake, but used as tools for formulating the individual artistic statements. The videos visualize the afore mentioned in-between world, they allow a lot of subjective interpretations according to the subjective viewer experiences.
The videos cannot be categorized – they are art, animation, short film and much more alike – they do not need to be categorized – because the are in the best sense of the words – art & moving images.
Albert Merino received already many prizes and awards and if he continues creating he will be also honoured in future. He certainly does not need another solo feature – on NewMediaFest2020, but this feature has the meaning to appreciate Albert’s work and by featuring 10 videos in total, say – thank you for collaborating during the past 10 years!
See more details & review the solo videoart feature – Albert Merino
