projects2021

Artists: David Corral, Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca, Gina Guasch, Carles Castaño, Raul Paez, Regina Registrated aka Regina Rossell aka Regina San Martino, Amaria Nasira, Jose Ferrandez, Jakob Kolb, Jose Luis Barquero, Stefano Statti

Musical interventions: Adelaida, Manuel del Rinkon, Ubaldo, Matt Robidoux, Los Yolos

1-11_07_2021

For 'ArtNou' emerging art festival

the title of the show in English is "To begin again" and it marks the reopening of LaCera13 , a radical laboratory that has hosted and supported a diverse array of projects , performances , concerts , happenings , presentations by emerging and mid-career creative agents ... after 2 years of incubation , restructuring and rehabilitating the space , we were finally ready to begin again with a farewell ... this exhibition featured 16 participants who were key in LaCera13's foundation and survival between our years of activity (2016-2019) ... there was no curator , I worked with Adelaida and David Corral to design and set-up the show ... as the curatorial team , we made no selection of the works ... instead , the artists chose to bring the work they wanted , and it was up to the curatorial team to integrate and find harmony between the works ... there was no discursive concept ... rather , there was a circumstantial one : LaCera13 as an amalgamating , polyvalent project , as a happening that brought together a multitude of creators and served as a reference point in the Raval neighborhood ...

this show is considered a farewell because it marks the last time LaCera13 will host a show without a budget ... "Tornar a començar" , thus , is a signal to a change of use and modification of function ... from now on , LaCera13 will function as a mutating project space , to be used by local institutions or entities with a pre-established budget who want to rent the space and / or its facilities ... we have two bedrooms , a kitchenette and 4 bathrooms ... therefore , local institutions can use the space as overflow for international residents ... artists who need a large space to develop ambitious projects can rent and live in the space ... debates , screenings , music recording sessions / recitals , theatre works , as a runway for fashion collections can all make use of the space ...

below are images from the show and the concerts⇩

Profesor Combate ⧽

my contribution besides the curatorial work was a loopy text that poetically described the elaboration of the exhibition , the intentions behind it , the concept , and that literally begins again and changes focus , tone and structure ...

Cosmic Corals,
Voguing Valleys,
Bushy Bouquets,
Furry Forests

Artist: Alina Melnikova

28_05-27_06_2021

At Espai Souvenir

notes from the curator :

built on a series of inversions , the first being the fact that the artist chose the curator , this lush exploration of fantasy and fiction with work by Lithuanian artist Alina Melnikova is rooted in an urban party featuring neon-lit plants that the artist attended ... it subsequently inspired her to weave together work that featured a mesh of plants and humans , a world where the plants too were characters with names and idiosyncrasies ... she also became interested in corals and their artificial / natural ambiguity ... this then inspired her first endeavors with ceramics which would come to form a part of this new world she was constructing ...

she contacted me having seen my "Artificialia WunderChapel" show for Loop which made evident certain connections between the concepts we were both working with ... thus , she proposed a collaboration with the art centre Espai Souvenir ... over the next months , i made several studio visits in which the artist and i commented on different conceptual methods to mould the show , ways of establishing nexuses between the two of us ... given Alina's focus on plants as characters , i thought it pertinent to talk about atrezzo and scenography as dream-space that serves as a conduit or portal to fantasy ... for the artist and i , we wanted to give protagonism to the unsung heroines of narrative and storytelling : the backdrops , the supposed lesser or decorative supports in theatre works or film ... enter the plants ...

regarding the design of the show , i wanted to introduce a series of inversions : paintings on the floor , ceramics on the wall ... the artist has already decided to leave it open whether the ceramic pieces went on the floor or wall ... we knew pedestals or stands we're contrary to our concept , so we decided to lean into this inversion and exaggerate it ... the drawings were all hung just a bit too high , or in unusual places ... by grounding the paintings , which were all quite large , we echoed the atrezzo one would see in the theatre , with different layers and spaces for the dancers or actors to weave in and out of ... but here , the dancers and actors were the fantastical plants , bushes , flowers , corals and mosses she translates into paint and clay ...

in a special hardware store in Barcelona , i fell in love with neon plexiglass bars that served as supports for two paintings and linked with our inquiries on artificial and natural elements in fantasy spaces ...

the ceramic pieces were made of white clay and slip-painted ... the drawings were made with an airbrush , applying it like a pencil ...

⥷ this is my exhibition text framing the concept and elaboration of the exhibition ...

there were several different perspectives from which one could enjoy the show ... we found neon green plastic sheets that we then cut up into strips and put in the empty doorway in the back of the room ... viewers were invited to look through the plastic strips and take a picture of the exhibitions 'backstage' ; a side not typically showed to the public ... these neon green strips acted as a kind of 'analogue' instagram filter ... viewers could also look through the neon green plexiglass bars as well to also alter the experience of the show ...