How I want to be in May, because this month comes charged with holy water and a lot of properties, movable and immovable. I guess you know (and if you don't, I'll tell you) that this place from where I write is my home. A room where my ideas, passions and devotions are combined with those of artists I admire and respect. Well, I also tell you that I often dream of having another house, a weekend house in La Garrotxa, a region of volcanoes, where I could do other things that perhaps I don't need to mention here.
The good news is that for most of this month and next, we will have twelve weekend houses to choose from. They are the Maisons de week-ends imaginaires of Laía Argüelles Folch. An exquisite project, which we open on Wednesday, May 11 at 7 pm. I thank her for opening the doors and windows of these (imaginary) houses of (imaginary) weekends, so that we live in foreign interiors and feel at home.
In this project, we also have a wonderful text by Juan Evaristo Valls Boix, member of the research group "Art and post-foundational thought". With him, Laía will talk tomorrow, Thursday May 5 at 12.30, in a cycle of dialogues between philosophy and art about the challenges of contemporary aesthetics and its political potential. The event will be at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Barcelona (Montalegre 6) and I will be there, if you want to come and embrace with me the possibility that aesthetics and politics are capable of making this life a better, more beautiful, more fair life.
After the opening of the exhibition next week, we will celebrate on Saturday, May 14 at 12h. Two points of reference, one meeting point. A new conversation/screening between Laía and another artist of the house, Sara Agudo Millán, in which they will talk about hospitality as a value, regarding the period they shared at Casa de Velázquez and Laía's work named "210" in honor of the studio where she worked.
More to follow, as always.
👉 Today at 6 pm, we open with Alba Yruela the short exhibition Diaris 2009 - 20019. More than 500 images of a whole decade hang on these walls until Saturday, so you can take the opportunity to take the photos you want, at 5 euros each one, and incorporate them into your personal collections.
These are the copies that Alba used for the edition of the book published by Terranova, publisher and bookstore friend and neighbor, in a work on her personal archive of ten years. Now, as a colophon (and as an accumulation of images) Alba's sensitivity and strength come together here, as they are all seen together in one space and feel the vivid passage of time.
And this Saturday, May 7 at 11 a.m., we say goodbye to the project "fent dissabte" with a breakfast at the gallery. Who is coming?
👉 I would like to use this letter to share with you the first chapter of El vernissatge, a digital project in Catalan that approaches art from the protocolary (and perhaps outdated) ritual of the opening. And although I know that many of you, dear people, will not understand this language, listening to my dear Isabel Banal talk about travel, landscape, nature, luggage, transit and transport, going from one place to another, is a real pleasure. Because with her I learn Latin, and because living and doing, everything is a journey. The enthusiasm of knowing that we are preparing a beautiful exhibition of her work for 2023 is enormous.
And as much as I love languages, here I would say what I have been thinking for a long time in the intimacy of my mind: how much better off we would be if in addition to English, French and German, we were taught at school how to defend ourselves minimally in the four official languages of this plurinational country in which we have been assigned or have decided to live.
⛲ Today I say goodbye with the universal language of music and with more good news. Because another great news of the month is that the "chiquito team" grows with Sergi Álvarez Riosalido, whom we were waiting for like a godsend and arrives at the best moment.
In addition, we celebrate that the video Stabat Mater, by our dear Marina Sagona, whom you may know from projects such as Ubi Consistam or Couscous, has won the Cadence Video Poetry Festival award. In an exercise of formal repetition, a portrait, a dialogue and the first movement of Giovanni Pergolesi's composition become a beautiful meditation on motherhood and divorce. Someday we'll show this gem of a video in the room, promise. For now, here you can treat your ears.
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