Text: Pedro de Llano

Please, Don’t Leave Me. In 1969, Bas Jan Ader painted this sentence with big black letters in the wall of an empty space and illuminated it with a floodlight so that he could take a photograph of it. It was a direct appeal to the spectator. The expression of an emotion, the fear of being left, but also the need to be loved. A minimum and poetic gesture that caused reactions in the real world: Stay here, don’t go away, stay with me. Without any doubt, this piece of Ader is as modest as effective. It created certain complicity among the text, the image and the spectator, and reduced the piece to its essence. Because, don’t you think that one of the main reasons encouraging the artist to work is the need to fell esteemed?
Yo deseo que te guste. The work Amaya González shows in these pages have certain parallelism with Ader’s one, but there are also some differences. On the one hand, it seems evident that the aim of both artists is to connect with the spectator/reader at the most intimate level. Getting rid of the superfluous elements to get a sincere communication. So what distinguishes them regardless of their respective formal characteristics? Mainly the content and the context. Because while he asks not to leave him alone, please, she wishes the things she offers to be to our liking. This way, the things that in a case refer to certain state of anxiety, emphasized by the shadows of the black and white image, in the other case shows us the way of a world apparently happy and bright like in a birthday party full of presents.
In contrast to the alternative attitude typical of the sixties, which reminds us of those decadent, marginal and melancholic environments soaking the imagery of a period in which the artists lived in permanent tension with a society reluctant to accept them – from which is derived the melancholic tone of Ader’s work – the piece of Amaya González Reyes talks us about a very different situation. She talks us about a context in which the creation is a essential part of a society that constantly celebrate the affluence in an obscene and consumerist way. What, perhaps, would explain the worrying closeness between her proposal and the promotion techniques typical of advertising and, particularly, of the advertisements of certain luxurious products that usually appear in the fashion magazines, but also in art ones, such as perfumes, complements or clothes, in the framework of dynamic of closeness between art and design that can be noticed specially nowadays.
That way, the same that happens with these lavish advertisements that turn the logo of the brands into desired objects that attract our attention in an almost paulovian way, Amaya González has decided to turn her piece into a similar product when including it in an art magazine: the one Dan Graham showed when he found out that to be an artist there is no need to have a piece hanging at a gallery, but an advertisement in the right publication. Some would say that this is an uncritical position. However, the way the artist connects with the question of promotion and the consequent economic profitability is ambiguous to a certain extent. Because if it is true that she designs a tempting image that attracts the eyes and remains in our mind, it is also truth that there is an exaggerated, parodic and humoristic point that turns her proposal into something different. Especially, because the product Amaya advertises is strictly permormative, and immaterial. Only her free wish to communicate with other person. Like love at first sight while staring at the magazine. Like a glance in the appropriate moment.