March 20th, 2005: Liverpool plays the annual Merseyside derby against Everton and leads 2-0. Suddenly, at the end of the forty-third minute, the television viewer gets a chance to see a miraculous two-second flash. One of the cameras zooms in on Rafael Benitez, Liverpool FC’s coach, while his name appears on the TV screen. As if magical powers are involved, the animation follows synchronously the movement of the trainer’s right hand. It looks as if he has conjured his name across the screen, casually, without loosing his concentration on the game, in short … “Rafa the Magician”.
The fragment received a second life on YouTube, and third life as the basis for a group exhibition of the same name. Rafa the Magician shows artistic interventions in the spirit of inventiveness, silliness, pleasure, deception and (black) humor. As in the football fragment, it is not the grand gesture that counts in this exhibition, but the imagination and observation skills of the artists, which is often visible with a refreshing dose of home, garden and kitchen magic. Simultaneously there is also room for non-artists, who bring to the world their often absurd and funny exploits through the Internet…
—i.c.w. Jean-Philippe Convert and White Rabbit, Berlin—
