Efren Alvarez at the Reina Sofia

Madrid – Economics, the project of the artist Efren Alvarez (Barcelona, 1980) produced specifically for the program Fissures of the Reina Sofia Museum, draws an overview of the current economy as autocaricaturiza discipline. Forty drawings and texts by various authors are relations systems in which the apparent intention of the project teaching translates into an approach to the unproductive, corrupt matter of alienation and relationships through work and consumption.

Efren Alvarez drawings take on a hybrid between the cartoon and diagram and participate in it as a salutary lesson and demystifying character as a pseudo-pedagogical interest. If the charts have historically been used to establish a gender power relations and genealogies interested in the proposal of Alvarez all hierarchy is subject to a dramatic eternal return: his drawings show a flow of relationships where whatever material is exchanged, it shows signs of an inevitable process of putrefaction that affects the individuals involved. Inspired by other cartoonists who have used the diagrammatic form (particularly in the Mexican cartoonist Eduardo del Río Rius) Efren Alvarez intentionally confusing provides a perspective, a contrast between what is argued in economic theory and the pictures and poems on display. It also displays a complete map of systems that reflect a worldview tragicomic, a map that reports in the same way as disinformation. In these diagrams and charts show through corporate and institutional division of labor, machinery schemes obsolete or dysfunctional anatomical drawings that reveal the perverse part of market-mediated relationships.

Economics refers to a bunch of characters whose identity is defined solely by terms of trade. This group seems to conjure up and the epitome of homo economicus to substantiate in the nineteenth century John Stuart Mill, but, far from the theoretical enthusiasm of the first industrial revolution, is upgraded from the perspective of the systemic crisis of global capitalism. In this respect, the Marxist concepts of surplus value, labor and production methods become, respectively, feces, and itineraries multicefálicas hydro production closed on themselves.

The result is an analysis of the economy as a tragic facet of the classical and theatrical sense of the term, circular narratives, as a vicious circle doomed to a fate known characters and powerless spectators continued momentum caused by a higher power that returns to human being unable to break the cycle.
For the preparation of the project, Efren Alvarez experience with the process that goes from the innocence of their unconscious worker alienation awareness through the study of classic authors or economists today’s interview. But the worker (in this case the artist) is no longer displayed strengthened awareness, but through these maps, it remains in a search of his place in a world that, paradoxically, support.

The program attempts to reveal cracks interstitial spaces of the museum that allows visitors to discover the narrative possibilities of buffer zones in areas of conflict, areas of hybrid (landings, stairwells, tunnels, connections between buildings). The choice of the mezzanine floor of the building Nouvel reveals a space inapercibido space before, one area between the semi-public space of the museum workers and public exhibit space and one of the connecting spaces, one of the fissures connects the two museum buildings in the same way that reveals your point of friction.