Overview
At Sharjah Biennial 9 José Luis Martinat presented two works, City and The Commissioned Drawing Series. City is one of a series of six videos and brings together footage from six different well-known cartoons from the 1970s. Martinat strips the original animations of their sound and ‘living’ characters, and reduces the narrative to the fundamental elements of its landscape. The resulting footage is then reconstructed and reanimated to five generic music tracks, often referred to as ‘muzak.’ The original cityscapes therefore lose their specificity and take on a completely different meaning.
The appropriation and use of pre-existing materials that characterise City is typical of much of Martinat’s work, which brings new associations and meanings to work created in the past.
This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 9