2019 | 1st Edition

Burning dinosaur bones - Fascículo 17

Pedro Magalhães

CarsAccidentDocumentary Photography

In this series, the departure from the figurative and the dissipation of the referent align with a conceptualization of the surface, explored on a contiguous plane, where the painting appears tired, devoid of luster and depth - to emphasize abstraction and reinvent the unique spatiality created by this machine. In "burning dinosaur bones," we can glimpse other images and obsessions, such as the wrecked vehicles photographed by Mateo Pérez Correa in "Siniestros" (2015), the (un)inhabited car interiors of Matthew Casteel, Ronny Campana's "Badly repaired cars" (2016), or Oscar Monzón's "Karma" (2014) on the privacy he interrupted and illuminated for five years at Madrid traffic lights. In all of them, the vehicle, which Roland Barthes likened to a grand Gothic cathedral, no longer represents the conquest of speed or gives shape to acceleration; it is no longer a fetish object or a symbol of counterculture but succumbs to the paradox of immobility imposed upon it by photography, monumentalizing the reflection of its consumption, valuing its uniqueness over equivalence, and recording what remains after glory. Susana Lourenço Marques, 2019