EL PERDEDOR SOCIAL E INÚTIL CULTURAL

’El perdedor social e inútil cultural’ is a video installation shown in 2010 in ARCO Madrid at Stella Lohaus. For this installation, Vergara collected historical images related to figures in Spain’s recent history (i.e. since the fall of Franco) combined with images he associated with that history. In the majority of his videos, Vergara traces the cinematic images with his brush, interposing his hand between the images and a glass screen. Sometimes the brush moves over the glass, leaving paint sweeps behind. By suggesting that he is absorbing his paint from the cinematic images, to eventually leave it behind on the glass, Vergara takes up recorded episodes in his native country’s history as his pallet. Through the video installation’s title – "the social and cultural useless loser" – which also paraphrases the Catalan writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939-2003), he can also call himself an outsider of that history. His particular position as an artist reveals itself in ’Teatro Montalban’ and ’Teatro’, montages of a video recording of a performance he gave in 2007 as his alter ego Straatman at the entrance of a party congress of the Partido Popular (see also ’Atención! Algunas vueltas más para llegar…’).