Karlos Gil – Origin, 2023

Origin searches beneath “the recognisable face of the Earth” for the origins of worlds, myths and life. Beginning in the network of service tunnels beneath Madrid, the camera winds its way through a labyrinth where different temporalities seem to converge. Images of this hidden infrastructure combine with a haunting soundscape to explore cinema’s capacity to shape and reshape conceptions of past, present and future. Gil describes the underground as a place largely inaccessible to humans, where the boundary between the real and the imagined begins to dissolve. Underground chambers are places where deep time, myth and speculation converge: the origins of gods and monsters, fossils and future life, burial and rebirth.

Suspended in a perpetual in-between of memory and speculative futures, Karlos Gil’s installations and films explore human nature through a mirrored dialogue with both natural and industrial landscapes. The transformations, blind spots, and renewal processes that traverse these environments give rise to scenarios in which the artificial and the natural converge. Within the spaces he creates, notions of time and space expand and slow down, allowing a glimmer of light to emerge from the heart of chaos.