Description of project by Fifty Dots Gallery
"Nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense, if we do not admit that people are not islands, independent of each other; every person is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole. "
Thomas Merton, 1955
In "We are not islands," Ordoñez shows us more than twenty poetic landscapes close to abstraction, with a markedly reflexive and transformative intention. The works of this series, created from simple shapes, capture the simple beauty of the islands, a beauty that has the capacity to move and connect with the purity of nature. Landscapes that symbolically represent the telluric link between all human beings.
Island: Portion of land surrounded by water. And also an area clearly separated from the surrounding space, in stations, airports, public roads, etc.
Thus we see ourselves too often: as islands, separated and disconnected from the rest of humanity. Surrounded by an empty space that, in an illusory way, protects us from a society that we believe hostile.
But the reality is different. The islands do not float in the sea, they are lands that emerge from the earth's crust and connected with the solid part of the planet. In the same way, all human beings are interconnected much more than we can imagine, and also with nature itself.
We are not islands and neither are the islands themselves.
Thomas Merton, writer, theologian and mystic (1915-1968), in 1955 wrote: "No man is an island". In this book he describes our deep and invisible bond with the people around us and with all mankind, no matter how we try to get away, isolate or disassociate ourselves from others.
"We are not islands, we are part of a society, and although we do not suspect it, even if we do not want it, even if we try to avoid it, our acts, of any sign, have a direct or indirect repercussion on others and our environment. And conversely those same people, our social environment and the news that come to us from the most distant places, affect in one way or another our thinking, what we feel and how we act."
"Nothing, absolutely nothing at all it makes sense, if we don't admit that people are not islands, independent of each other; every person is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole. "
Thomas Merton, 1955
How to transfer this idea of logos to the photographic language?
"Unexpectedly, a possible answer came to me on a trip to the Canaries. Absorbed by the vision of the vast ocean, sometimes raging and at times calm, and the latent fire present in the volcanic rocks, I felt more connected than ever with my visible and invisible environment. Contemplating pure and true beauty, I began to experience the bond of which Merton was talking about."
C. Ordóñez
The seas that apparently separate us, are the same seas that give us life and that have allowed the connection between all the peoples of the Earth. Island rocks, apparently disconnected from the rest of the world, continue to show their indissoluble union with the Earth's crust in its volcanic past.
The project "We are not islands" plays with the apparent contradiction between the title itself and the places where the works are created (always on islands), with the aim of activating our critical spirit and the ability to question established paradigms.
His poetic landscapes, in a symbolic way, represent the telluric link between all human beings. They show us a simple beauty - almost abstract - that has the capacity to move us and connect us with the purity of nature and the vital energy of the Earth. A beauty that reminds us that, as members of the whole, we are also part of its essence. We are also nature.
