White Noise
2023-ongoing
Gabriel Gomez
White Noise is a concept based on the impatient sound of the wind, the very sound we unconsciously retain when it stops. The same echo we count in the corners of enclosed spaces is the same one that makes the trees move and isolates us. It's what happens after an unanswered question, the sound that cohabits with us without knowing that if it stops, we'll hear it.
Today I felt small, so I folded a sheet of paper in half and started writing on one side - the right side always works for me. A small sheet, a medium one if need be. Anyway, today I felt small, I'd been thinking about it for a while, maybe a week, not that long.
Small for a while, a time when it was difficult for me to know who I am and who I want to be for others. Small like when I sign, always tiny, small like the space I'm always trying to inhabit, very different from the space they suggest I occupy, that they give me? that they let me? that they lend me? I never know. I've been thinking about my detachment, and perhaps I'm wondering why I leave footprints in spaces where I was just passing through. Maybe I know the answer. But I walk on the edge, or so I think, whereas for some people I walk in the middle. I'm looking for the edges, the corners.
Today, I asked myself if I wanted to or if I had learned to want, like learning to harm, with deadly side effects for those exposed to it, for those who are exposed. Today, I was given more than I was ready to have.
Today I realized that I am not aware of the space I inhabit, today they gave me more than the shore, they gave me the sea, but they bent me, today I was the sheet on which I write, write in my head, write on paper, almost without a difference, but my memory fails and the emotions are blurred, fortunately there is paper and pencil.
I've realized that I write small, maybe I think there aren't enough sheets of paper, maybe two have always been enough, or even just one.
I occupy a table in the kitchen, small and sufficient, I move to the right to leave a free space in the middle, I don't want to disturb, but why do I decide the space that people occupy in me? don't I have control over the space that I want to occupy in them? I wonder if I want it or not.
I want to love and be loved and at the same time come out unscathed, but is that possible? How do you know if you've swum if you haven't put your head underwater?
In retrospect, I realize that unconsciously I turned you into everything around me, in everything intangible, but that cohabited with me with a certain harmony, in a point of delirium I remembered asking you if the idea of being a tree, a bicycle or a shoe called you in a failed attempt to give you shape, but what madness would be to give shape to the wind.
I don't remember many things in my life and sometimes I think I'll lose my memory very early, but if that ever happens I hope I'll remember that phone call, in which I told you that you were the sound of the wind, that you were that insistent memory every time I saw the sea or the yellow color because you reminded me of the sun. Even if I lose my memory and I'm not the same or you lose it and you don't remember anymore I hope you will always be what I always felt you were and you are what you always wanted to be.
I wondered where the empty gazes were looking but never empty. In one of them I decided to convince my body to stop feeling my leg and my left arm or gravity on my fingers. Today I wonder if letting go of my weight would help me see myself more present, but I am aware enough to understand that there are feelings that were made to be heard.
Gabriel Gómez's (Caracas, 1993) subtly cared for and delicately sober frames capture fragments of close and recognisable realities, but aestheticised through an editorial lens that exploits the beauty of common situations, previously conceptualised by the photographer. A gaze that recognises the ambitious regimes of contemporary vision and appropriates its strategies to sublimate the commonplace, for while 'all photographs aspire to the condition of being unforgettable', Gabriel's images make use of the beauty of existing memories to exacerbate their appeal to the eye that looks at them". Manuel Vásquez Ortega, "Sobre la fotografía (de Gabriel Gómez)".
"I think of my work as an exploration of detail and silence. It is melancholic, peaceful, and joyful. My exploration had to do with discovering a taste for the unexpected, the spontaneous, colour, lighting, composition, and movement. I didn't expect to find something specific because I always believed that trying different techniques or styles would not only lead me to find new ideas but would also allow me to know myself better.
Sometimes my work reminds me how fragile and vulnerable I can be. As I am often surrounded by people (something I am very grateful for), I miss little memories, details, and those rare moments in my life that I try to replicate. It's a whole new experience every time I look at old work."