Val del Omar: Poética cuadrofónica sin fin

There are two types of artists in life: those who like curves and those who don't. Well, both Val del Omar and Fernando Vacas are two artists who do.

Val del Omar was a "cinema believer" who formulated the overarching concept of Picto-Luminic-Audio-Tactile, also known by the acronym PLAT. As early as 1928, he had already anticipated several of his most characteristic techniques, including the "apanoramic image overflow", which extended beyond the boundaries of the screen and the concept of "tactile vision". In music, Fernando Vacas follows in the footsteps of Val del Omar, finding the conceptual boundary between risk and alchemy, between musical styles and diverse disciplines that converge (as he already demonstrated with his flamenco opera A través de la Luz).

A restless artist who moves between tradition and the avant-garde, Vacas takes us on a journey between electronics and musical textures ranging from floral to organic, from flamenco to avant garde, from minimalism to the most obtuse baroque. Taking David Lynch as an artistic reference (a filmmaker with whom he has collaborated), inspiration from the French surrealists and influence from such artists as Julio Romero de Torres and Val del Omar himself, Vacas puts a twist on the new unpublished pieces of the creator and poet from Granada. His musical offerings add a third dimension outside the images, and leads us on a stroll to a third courtyard where our mind always wins.

If to all these artistic aspects we also add his facet as a creator of sound art pieces (exhibited at the Julio Romero de Torres Museum, among others), we start getting an idea of what kind of music and performance is in store for us with this project being created for the closing of Documenta Madrid. The tools that this multidisciplinary artist will use to guide us on this journey are samplers, bases taken from old flamenco, his own live voice and Berlin-infused influences of Albaicín in Granada.

Abstraction and color, cinematics and stillness, depth of field and breadth of sky, animated beings and, most of all, lots of poetic translation of ourselves. Vacas tells us: "I celebrate and honor Val del Omar's legacy, camouflaging myself in with him and taking the most electronic, industrial and flamenco highlights from an ever-infinite work".

If Granada is mysticism and Cordoba is mystery, what we find in this work is mysticism and mystery, all in one liturgy. Welcome to a world still to be discovered: the world of the illuminated artist and the world of the student with a flashlight.

This program is made possible thanks to the collaboration of Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga (President of the Val del Omar Archive) and Piluca Baquero (Director of the Val del Omar Archive).

> Documenta Madrid Closing Session