Ignasi Aballí

b. 1958, Spain

The works under the generic title of Llistats (Lists) are the result of cutting up newspapers every day for more than seven years now. The process consists of cutting out figures that appear in the news, taking them out of context, and turning them into an objective, anonymous, neutral data. The different figures are then grouped together according to subject (people, dead people, wounded people, missing people, time, money, etc), which offers an image on a specific aspect of reality. They are not invented figures but real ones, extracted from everyday material. Newspapers summarise everything that can be commented on and communicated to the public, 24 hours a day, which is supposedly of interest to us. Before throwing it away, I collect the material that will remain instead of being ephemeral. The original (the equivalent to the negative in photography) is a collage size DIN A4, where the pieces from newspapers are organised in two columns, adjusted from the left. This original is scanned and then enlarged on photo paper to its final size. The numbers are never repeated. Each of them makes reference to a single topic, different from the rest.

The collection becomes somewhat obsessive and mechanical. It is a daily routine that will finally allow me to group together data that will show aspects of reality: dead people, economy, time… They are like snapshots that needed several months of exposure before their apparition.

(Text: OPEN e v + a catalogue, 2005)