Manuel Correa

Manuel Correa is a visual artist and filmmaker born in Medellin, Colombia. Manuel was influenced early on by his mentor Libe de Zulategi, drawing inspiration particularly from her fresh take on art history, and who also enabled his first show at El Taller Gallery in 2008. Subsequently, Manuel started experimenting with black and white photography, which turned into a new showing at the Regional Fine Arts Salon at Medellin Palace of Culture in 2010. During this time he completed “Pantanillo”, a short narrative film set in Antioquia based around the theme of incest.

Manuel is deeply interested in pictorial depiction and representational problems in film and photography. His work as both a filmmaker and fine art photographer has enabled Manuel to assume a unique method in both of these highly interconnected but ontologically distant mediums.

Mind your Business

This project sparked from the interest in working with photography as a way to push cinematic directorial techniques and stage directions into the realm of the non-narrative, where I believe they are useful in the representation of the self-consciousness of non-actors. I believe that the sense of self is always mediated by the understanding of another perspective which perceives you, never allowing you to perceive yourself directly. Using video and film proved to be ineffective at a very early stage of the project as I noticed that the linearity of the time-based medium evaded the pictorial as it embraced the narrative. “Stage Business” is an important principle of realist acting, where thespians devise unscripted purposeless actions, that by their lack apparent of significance become the very descriptor of realism. In contrast to the constructed photographs the purely documentary still lifes present in the series are set as an experimental counterpoint with the intention of transforming the way they will be read side by side when juxtaposed with more constructed imagery.

 

In 2011, Manuel moved to Vancouver to major in Film and Video at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. Here, he would draw influence from his professors Stephen Waddell and Jonathan Tammuz. In late 2011, Manuel completed work in the art department of the short film ”Afternoon at Gudrun’s”, a film by Javier Badillo that was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2013, Manuel directed the short film ”The Mayor’s Corpse”, which will be entering the festival circuit in late 2013. Currently Manuel is directing “#ArtOffline” a Feature Documentary about fine art and its intersections with the internet and digital media, a piece featuring artists like Roy Arden, Geoffrey James and Jessica Eaton.

To view more of Manuels work please visit his website.