A light bulb, raised from the epicentre of the structure, illuminates the room. I lie: two of them do. Around it, hundreds of postcards rest on the display slits in a continuous and hypnotic movement. The light filters and orbits through the slits. This is the landscape described by With Open Eyes in the Dark (2021), Oriol Vilanova's solo exhibition at the Elba Benítez Gallery, which has been on display again this year at CentroCentro. The Catalan artist has spent years rummaging through flea markets and antique shops in search of postcards of all kinds (landscapes, monuments, animals, fruits, holy figures...), in order to form a continuously expanding collection. However, Vilanova's premise does not refer so much to the content but to the gesture itself, the performative value that collecting implies [1] and whose medium is, in this case and as is customary in contemporary art, the tangible image. 

The initiative of El Postalero builds bridges with collecting but also with something similar to “window dressing”: it is a centrifugal force that aims to energize —and dynamite— the creative agents of the capital of Granada. This is a complex effort, since at the same time that it tries to make visible and give voice to the artists of the province, it also avoids endogamy. The ability to reconcile both tasks is the responsibility that falls on the project team, which collaborates with the Espacio Lavadero (managed by Miguel Ángel Moreno Carretero) to develop this proposal. Let's break it down. 

In 1984, Perejaume carried a metal postcard during one of his mountain climbs. After placing it on the rocky ground, he filled it with small mirrors. The photographs that the artist took on these excursions show us a collection of changing postcards, which reflect the contingency of the landscape in a gesture that is the opposite of that of a stereoscope [2]: the images are always perceived from the outside, creating a distance between what is represented and the object that materializes them. The postcard—both Perejaume's and those we find in souvenir shops—always returns the image from the outside, since it reflects what is happening around it. However, in its representative effort, it inevitably ends up distancing us from what it intends to teach us; it expels us: 

«Perejaume has shown us that any frame and reflection of the environment can potentially be a landscape, a postcard. (…) The painting and the photograph of the landscape, the postcard of this theme as well, aim to contemplate and reproduce from the outside the vision or image of the environment. An external environment is shown in it, which is therefore made accessible at the same time that it is objectified and a distance, a separation, is created between it, on the one hand, and, on the other, the humanly manufactured image and its observer [3].» 

It is at this point where the proposal that concerns us here has a certain success in relation to the rest of the world's postcard makers: in the direct and close encounter with the image, that is, with the reflection that it intends to return to us. The city of Granada is known in our autonomous community for its great influx of passengers, divided into two general groups: tourists and students. Tourism gentrifies the center and objectifies the landscape, while generating a high economic benefit for certain sectors [4]. The student body, on the other hand, has a more moderate passage through the city: it inhabits and consumes but also contributes and enriches, sustaining its own economic engine [5]. This difference may be due to the time that each group dedicates to the city. The passage of tourism is fleeting, while students can establish a closer and more symbiotic relationship with the city that hosts them. Something similar happens with the image. 

We can relate to the image in a capricious, almost irresponsible way, or we can do so with a certain care and curiosity, slowing down the times of our encounters. To be fair, what El Postalero offers us has a bit of both, but it tries to influence our relationship with the images it offers us monthly, precisely because of the relational nuance of the project. The postcards, which are renewed at each opening of Espacio Lavadero, invite regulars to return, to recognize what is shown and to examine in detail the new batch of images. This incentive helps to build a community feeling, practically festive, of closeness to the image. However, the same cannot be said of the online sale of the works, which endangers this communion with the postcards but contributes to their rapid acquisition and distribution throughout the country. 

En último término y como sucede en la ciudad que dio luz al proyecto, lo que queda es tan solo una cuestión de responsabilidad: ser capaces de balancearse entre el beneficio económico, que contribuye a la carrera y sostenibilidad de los y las artistas participantes, así como enriquece y promueve el coleccionismo y el micromecenazgo; y plantear relaciones más cuidadosas con las imágenes, propiciando encuentros reincidentes y divertidos donde las postales puedan reflejar un paisaje distendido, sosegado y luminoso.