In a photographic world increasingly filled
with formulaic approaches and overdone trends that are becoming borderline clichés
it is immensely satisfying to stumble upon the work of Venezuelan artist Manto Pérez. I feel it’s inevitable not to think of the
work of Jackson Pollock when looking at Manto´s work. Not only the final pieces
resemble the ones of the late abstract expressionist in its chaotic visual
outcome, but one can also draw conceptual ties with it.
Manto does not
photograph in a “conventional way” she uses a small pinhole camera and exposes
the whole film while she moves through space or the space moves around her, a
dance that merges space, time and light into the film. It could even be said
that the outcome image is no more than a document of a performance act in which
the artist relinquishes control and gives in into the chaos of space time.
Manto´s work is raw and visceral but yet extremely poetic and conceptually
strong, unpretentiously it questions visual language, the photographic notion
of point of view and spatial relationships. The fact that it goes counter to
most of the contemporary photographic paradigms is just a bonus.
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