Ivan Franco Spain, b. 1979

Artistic Statement
The imagery presented in my work doesn’t aim to represent reality, truth, falsehood, or even the imaginary. Instead, it seeks to emphasize meaning through the concept of the simulacrum. In this context, the materiality of the artwork transcends its narrative (the sign), becoming more significant than the content it conveys. The artwork becomes an object in itself, where the importance lies not in what is represented but in the sense that emerges from the simulacrum.

The goal is not to distinguish the real from the unreal but to use the mechanisms of reality to question existence itself. The image cannot exist as true anywhere else, like a simulacrum. As Baudrillard discusses in “Simulacra and Simulation”, referencing the divine simulacrum: “This is precisely what was feared by Iconoclasts, whose millennial quarrel is still with us today. They predicted this omnipotence of simulacra, the faculty simulacra have of effacing God from the conscience of man, and the destructive, annihilating truth that they allow to appear – that deep down God never existed, that only the simulacrum ever existed, even that God himself was never anything but his own simulacrum.”

My work fundamentally explores the notion of contemplation, delving into our need to identify and understand reality. If the recognition of the simulacrum challenges the survival of reality, then the simulacrum is not a mask hiding the truth, but the truth itself—revealing that there is none beyond it.

“The simulacrum is never what hides the truth – it is truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”
— Ecclesiastes