Tis exhibition is the result of a collaboration between two contemporary art collections. One the one hand, DKV Artèria, an art collection started over a decade ago with the intention of humanising the premises of Dènia hospital which now has over 600 pieces by some 250 young or emerging Spanish artists; and on the other the collection of the Fundació Vila Casas, a body that works to foster Catalan contemporary art by running four art venues in Barcelona and Girona, with extensive holdings of works and a busy programme of exhibitions and activities, as well as social health research.
Dreaming of a Possibility offers a reflection on today’s world, placing the accent on the events of recent years - the economic, political and cultural crisis - that have brought about a paradigm shift; the financial crisis, globalisation and its apparent dismantling, migratory movements, international terrorism, technological revolution and artificial intelligence seem to have shifted the foundations on which Europe stands. In this context, the artist who is visionary and aware of his or her emancipating role, is impregnated with this essence and constructs a view of their own able to establish a resistance: a safe place from which to take on the world.
Artists, thanks to their sensitivity and innovative spirit, act as a mirror for these concerns, creating works of art that make us think about ourselves as individuals or about society as a whole. And they do this with their ability to go out on a limb where time is suspended, at the same time from an intimate, personal space, currently endangered because we live in a world increasingly exposed and at the service of the external and the image. This is why the exhibition builds the dialogue on two conceptual pillars: Time Suspended and Intimate Resistance.
Time Suspended
The first part of the show is opened by Mireya Masó (Barcelona, 1963), who talks about the concept of time in a photographic diptych created on her trip to Antarctica, and Álvaro Sánchez Montañés (Madrid, 1973), with photographs of an Icelandic setting which, alongside an apparent timelessness, points to human presence despite the frozen atmosphere of a lonely winter landscape. These silent landscapes frozen in time are complemented by the work of the artist Anna Malagrida (Barcelona, 1970), with a snapshot of the Poblenou neighbourhood of Barcelona at a time of rapid transformation; Jordi Bernadó (Lleida, 1966), with a photograph of a Stockholm landscape that exalts human intervention in nature at its most splendid, and Jordi Fulla (Barcelona, 1967), who uses paint and canvas to link oriental philosophy with the need for universal pardon for the devastation of Hiroshima.
Following the same criterion but in more abstract languages we find the piece by Lluís Lleó (Barcelona, 1959), who alludes in his work to the passing of time in combination with his admiration for Romanesque painting and the use of traditional techniques, and Susana Solano (Barcelona, 1946), who with an installation that simulates a time capsule indicates her intention of trapping it. The artists Bleda & Rosa (Maria Bleda, 1969, and Josep Maria Rosa, 1970), with the photograph Complejo funerario Saqqara [Saqqara Burial Ground] (2010), freeze the passing of time, with the architecture of the past as the key element, while Joan Ponç (1927-1984) immortalises in Metafísica geomètrica [Geometrical Metaphysics] a conical shape that, in a dialogue with the previous work, could symbolise a stylised contemporary pyramid outside the passing of time. Patricia Dauder (Barcelona, 1973) transmits this timeless concept by playing with the medium itself in the works Impresión [Impression] and S/t [Untitled], in which burnt pieces of wood are the protagonists. Toni Catany (Llucmajor, 1942 – Barcelona, 2013) is featured with living and still life in photographs where the passing of time seems to be actually suspended. Stella Rahola (Barcelona, 1980), with her work Innerspace, made of porcelain, seems to shift existence into those limbs where everything is frozen. Jo Milne (Edinburgh, 1966), with Configuració cosmològica B (Cosmological Configuration B), expresses the apparent chaos of the cosmos, where mathematics, science and technology coexist in suspension. Counterpointing this, in Pintura 826 (Painting 826) Joaquim Chancho (Tarragona, 1943) seeks the order of nature, as it submerged in a parenthesis). Vicenç Viaplana (Granollers, 1955) makes that which our eyes cannot see visible, as in Indicis (Evidence), in which he materialises that cloud of transparent existence intrinsic to time. Mar Guerrero (Palma, 1991), with two pieces, one of them audiovisual (Donde nada lleva a nada N3 & N4 / Where Nothing Leads to Nothing N3 & N4), invites the viewer to imagine possible or impossible journeys, in most cases dreamed, by suspending simple elements, in this case paper over water. Three pieces of sculpture: Tejido XXVI [Fabric XXVI] by Anna Talens (València, 1978), in the series Naturaleza revelada. Chaparral. El mundo entero es medicina [Nature Revealed. Thicket. The whole World is Medicine] by Pamen Pereira (Ferrol, 1963) and Le grand Jon by Xavier Escribà (Paris, 1969) incorporate three dimensions and other materials (brass, glass, bush, canvas and acrylic) in a more physical approach to expressing conceptual themes, like in this case the passing of time.
Intimate Resistance
In an abstract, conceptual language, different artists have been chosen to think about this intimate resistance through their creations. Gonzalo Elvira (Patagonia, 1971) uses repetitive symbols to refer to society’s collective amnesia, while Xavier Grau (Barcelona, 1951) offers a whole set of intimate emotions. Pep Agut (Terrassa, 1961), with architectural lines and metallic aesthetics, recalls the evolution of building in different civilisations, and others like Manuel Eiris (Santiago de Compostela, 1970) and Miquel Mont (Barcelona, 1963), in a minimalist conceptual code, deal with what could be intimate inner spaces. Three women, Eulàlia Valldosera (Barcelona, 1963), Isabel Rocamora (Barcelona, 1968) and Soledad Córdoba (Avilés, 1977), artistically express an celebration of the universal feminine figure and its intimacy. June Crespo (Pamplona, 1982), Christian García Bello (Coruña, 1986) and Gabriel (Badalona, 1954) materialise in three dimensions people’s intimate motions in an increasingly troubled, unstable world.