VAT. Guillem de Castro, 118
Fernando Sánchez Castillo mixes two basically antagonistic elements in the exhibition Fake games of the VAT, the war and the game, an industry closely linked to Alicante. The main work is a large carpet made of 4.000 plastic toys representing the famous militiaman photographed by Robert Capa and Gerda Taro at the moment of being shot down. Recent studies have revealed that the very famous snapshot is a fake, which gives the artist a foothold to propose a game about double negation: a fake (by definition, a toy), of a fake (the photography of Capa-Taro) does not become true? Visitors over the age of fifteen (the minimum age to enlist during the war) you can take home a figurine if you share in one in return post it on the wall an anecdote from your family related to the civil war. That is to say, that it is expected that there will be casualties in the brigade. The goal is to create a large collectivized monument, horizontal and participatory, made with the oral memory of the anonymous, those who create history, that is to say, we. The other important piece is the figurine of a militiaman made in the collectivized factories of Ibi who raises his fist high in salute to the republican, one of the very few toys manufactured during the war and a compromising object after the victoria of the fascists. On the second floor of the room we come across the war-game dichotomy again, this time in the form of photographs that portray soldiers playing kill or die. S.M.
