This morning, along with Chus Roig, we have visited Evru Zush at his home studio in Barcelona.
We remember his exhibition “Volver a ser” at Galeria SENDA almost three years ago, an exhibition of small-format pencil drawings with which he presents hybrid beings with a human face and a snake body.
Evru Zush‘s work is characterized by the construction of a personal and autobiographical mythology, based on images that seem to overflow and the creation of his own style of writing, giving rise to multiple parallel universes that maintain a subtle balance where the logic of composition barely keeps the chaos in check.
During the creative process of his latest exhibition at the gallery, Evru Zush noticed that the drawings he was working on corresponded to the iconographic structure of the representations of the “Nagas”, Hindu deities with a human face and torso, generally female, and snake body. In this way, Evru’s constant desire to “be again” materializes, in the present exhibition, in the representation of snakes, beings that, like the artist himself, shed their skin in a natural process of renewal and increase.
Exhibition “Volver a Ser” Evru Zush in Galeria SENDA 2020
Last Monday, November 7, Barcelona became the epicenter of art and reflection when Galeria SENDA opened its doors to welcome three prominent names from the cultural world: sculptor Jaume Plensa, photographer Jean-Marie del Moral and journalist Màrius Carol. The reason for this meeting was the presentation of the book “Interior, 2022”, a work that transcends the printed pages to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by creators in the context of a globalized market.
The theme of the talk, entitled “Shared Challenges. Creating in a Global Marketplace“, addressed profound and pertinent questions about the creative process in the contemporary world. How do artists face the pressure of producing in a globalized environment? What impact do market trends have on creativity and originality? These were some of the questions raised during the conversation, which turned into an exciting dialogue between creative minds.
Jaume Plensa, known for his imposing sculptures that explore the relationship between the individual and the environment, shared his vision of the need to maintain authenticity in a world flooded with external influences. For Plensa, true creativity arises from the connection with oneself and the surrounding environment, and it is crucial to preserve that connection in a globalized context.
For his part, Jean-Marie del Moral, whose photography captures the essence of urban life and human diversity, spoke about the role of art as a tool for expression and resistance in an increasingly homogenized world. For Del Moral, creativity is an act of resistance against uniformity, a way of celebrating the diversity and complexity of the world we inhabit.
Màrius Carol, a journalist with a long career in the cultural field, provided a unique perspective on the role of the media in the promotion and dissemination of contemporary art. In a world where attention is fragmented and information is constantly flowing, Carol stressed the importance of telling authentic and meaningful stories that connect with audiences on an emotional level.
The presentation of the book “Interior, 2022” marked the beginning of a series of #SENDATalks, a typology of talks organized by Galeria SENDA that brings together artists, creators and thinkers to explore relevant topics in the world of art and culture. These meetings provide a platform for the exchange of ideas, debate and reflection, fostering an open and enriching dialogue between different disciplines and perspectives.
The event concluded with a question and answer session, where the audience had the opportunity to interact with the speakers and delve deeper into the topics discussed. The atmosphere was one of inspiration and camaraderie, leaving a lasting impression on all present and sowing the seeds for future conversations and creative collaborations. In short, the talk at Galeria SENDA was much more than a book presentation; it was a transformative encounter that illuminated the complexities and challenges of the creative process in the 21st century, and demonstrated the power of art and culture to bring people together and enrich our lives.
During the period of the Artissima fair, Recontemporary presents “Inverso Mundus” by the AES+F collective, a show in collaboration with Galeria SENDA (Barcelona).
Opening: Friday, November 4 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Press Preview: November 2 and 3, 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
The work is signed by the AES+F collective, artists who have represented Russia on various occasions and events such as the Venice Biennale and Sao Paulo, and who at this time have openly distanced themselves from the politics of their country. A choice intended to support artistic production regardless of the country of origin.
Inverso Mundus is a critique of the despotic situation we live in today, in the midst of the climate, social and economic crisis, exploitation and gender inequality. The video work, about 40 minutes long, is presented with an ad hoc setting designed by the designer Andrea Isola with the input of the participants in the Exhibition Design workshop organized by Recontemporary in the days immediately prior to the opening.
The work “Inverso Mundus” has as its initial point of reference the carnivalesque engravings of the 16th century in the “upside down world” genre, an early form of populist social criticism that emerged with the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press. The title of the project mixes old Italian and Latin, from a centuries-old stratification of meanings, combining “Inverso”, the Italian “reverso” and old Italian “poetry”, with the Latin “Mundus”, which means “world”. “.
This work reinterprets contemporaneity through the tradition of printmaking, depicting a contemporary world consumed by a tragicomic apocalypse where social conventions are turned upside down to highlight underlying premises we take for granted:
Metrosexual garbage men bathe the streets with sewage and garbage. An international board of directors is usurped by its impoverished doppelgangers. The poor give alms to the rich. Chimeras come down from the sky to be petted like pets. A pig guts a butcher. Women dressed in cocktail dresses sensually torture men in cages and devices inspired by IKEA furniture in an ironic reversal of the Inquisition. Tweens and octogenarians fight a kickboxing match. Riot police embrace protesters in an orgy on a huge luxurious bed. Men and women carry donkeys on their backs and virus-like radiolaria in Haeckel’s illustrations, peering out and perching on unsuspecting people who are busy taking selfies.
The video’s background music is an amalgamation of Léon Boëllmann’s 1895 Gothique, an original piece by contemporary composer and media artist Dmitry Morozov (also known as VTOL), along with excerpts from Ravel, Liszt, Mozart and Tchaikovsky, with a special emphasis on “Casta Diva” by Norma by Vincenzo Bellini.
“The works are a reference to the current situation of sudden changes and extreme instability, a moment in which more than ever it is necessary to be carried away by the communicative power of art and the power it has to unite and make people reflect, synthesizing universal messages.”
The artist from Barcelona debuts in the world of opera for the 31st edition of the publication of Amics del Liceu and exhibits 26 originals created for the book Temporada d’Opera: “Opera Season” at Lab36.
The link between art and music is one of the objectives of “Temporada d’Opera” and one of the reasons why Yago Hortal was commissioned to create the works for each of the operas that will be performed during the 2022-2023 season.
Opening this Wednesday, October 19 at 7:00 p.m. at Lab36. See you there!
“Temporada d’Opera” was born as a preparation tool to attend Liceu performances and as a path for the renewal of operatic iconography with contemporary artists. Every year the Association invites great personalities – writers, politicians, intellectuals, etc. – to present the operas programmed by the Gran Teatre del Liceu with the intention of showing unusual visions and, at the same time, making it clear that there are many and very diverse who love the art of opera. In other chapters, opera critics and musicologists from around the world also analyze the titles.
Yago Hortal L’incoronazione de Poppea 1, 2022 Acrylic on aluminium 30 x 21 cmYago Hortal Macbeth 2, 2022 Acrylic on aluminium 42 x 30 cmYago Hortal Il trittico, 2022 Acrylic on aluminium 30 x 63 cm
For more information on the work available in this exhibition, please contact by phone +34 934 87 67 59 or via e-mail to: info@galeriasenda.com
In this edition of the fair Estampa we present a single show by the Brazilian artist Iran Do Espirito Santo with a sample of watercolors produced throughout the confinement, with which the artist inaugurates the use of color while remaining faithful to his own refined and austere style.
Galeria SENDA booth at Estampa art fair, IFEMA Madrid
In this exhibition entitled “El Pangolín”, Do Espirito Santo builds perfectly balanced geometric representations thanks to a gaze focused on detail.
The title is shared with the writings of Enrique Juncosa co-published by SENDA Essay and by Turner, which will be presented during the fair. The watercolors illustrate this anthology and create a relationship between the two poetics: the pictorial discourse and literature harmonize in a single aesthetic in which the delicate works of Espírito Santo shape the game of ideas that Juncosa proposes to us.
From SENDA Gallery we present a Gino Rubertin this year’s edition of the fair SWAB. A single show starring the artist’s surprising works: recent paintings that incorporate light and sound. Rubert described his pictorial technique in an interview with Gisela Chillida in 2015:
“ I feel satisfied when the images finally suggest more than narrate. […] I love that people want to touch my paintings to understand what they are seeing, to create the illusion of space and action where there is neither one thing nor the other. Hence the taste for using the real objects you speak of [photographs, fabrics, plastics, hair, etc.].”
With 14 editions behind it, the SWAB fair faces 2022 maintaining its mission of providing projection to the spaces and disciplines that are charting the course of the art scene in the coming years.
The edition will take place from October 6 to 9, 2022. Visit us at Stand 25.
SWAB chooses Barcelona for its free spirit and cosmopolitan character. Holding the fair in this city means generating a unique platform for international exchange and dialogue, a meeting between cultures united by art and twinned under the blue Mediterranean sky.
For all these reasons, SWAB is located in a representative place in the city, in front of the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, at the foot of the Font Màgica, and guarded by the Venetian Towers of Plaza España: the Italian Pavilion of the Fira de Barcelona.
Booth installation view for SWAB 2022
We hope to see you there!
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The artist Anna Malagrida presents a video installation that starts from the traces that man has perpetuated in the landscape of volcanic area of La Garrotxa.
“The Devil’s Stone, 2022″ focuses on the popular imagination that is created around these footprints and their perception.
The proposal is part of the Natura Viva project and is curated by Carolina Grau. Ten artists from ten Catalan cities have been invited to explore the local geography and reveal to us, once again, how to feel and learn from our nature.
The objective is to raise awareness and reflect on the evolution of our footprint and its impact on the biosphere. The result of the ten artistic projects can be seen simultaneously in the ten cities during the fall of 2022.
Barcelona Symposium: Talking Galleries’ flagship meeting
The Barcelona Symposium, at the heart of Talking Galleries’ work, is a two-day conference of debates, cogent conversations, and fruitful networking all around art galleries.
It is a unique opportunity for prominent art world figures to discuss and reflect on various aspects of art gallery management. It attracts a diverse audience, made up of gallerists, collectors, art journalists, curators, artists, and fair directors, who are engaged in the discussion and contribute to the exchange of expertise and relevant knowledge across all sectors of the art business.
Held annually in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), each edition of the event has brought together over 200 professionals from about 25 countries all around the world.
It has been confirmed that Do Espirito Santo will be making a large wall painting (a version of ‘En Passant‘) at the exhibition of Contemporary Latin American Art that has the Cisneros collection as a starting point. Open on April 30th, 2023.
“The letter seems to me a beautiful metaphor of society: a single letter is nothing; but together with others it can form words, concepts; this is the power of community.” – Jaume Plensa
The Gran Teatre del Liceu opened the 2022-2023 season yesterday, Monday, with the new doors, or ‘Constellations’, the work of sculptor Jaume Plensa, highlighting the celebration of the 175th anniversary of the historic Barcelona institution.
The artist Jaume Plensa next to Salvador Alemany, president of the Fundació del Gran Teatre del Liceu
The doors (stainless steel, 4 x 4 m) are inspired by two classics of Catalan culture: the architect Antoni Gaudí, and the painter Joan Miró, with his nearby Pla de la Boquería mosaic, in addition to the close relationship with the name of one of his most original series ‘Constel·lacions (1939)’.
“I think this dialogue between the past and the future gives us the key to the present: the contemporary gesture at the heart of society, embracing music with words and voice with writing.” The artist said yesterday at the opening ceremony at Las Ramblas.
Plensa intends to vindicate the diversity of the promenade with letters from nine alphabets engraved on the railings – intermingling Arabic, Latin or Chinese – that will reflect their moving shadows on the floor of the entrance, when the doors reach the light of the lamps of the portal.
During the presentation of the doors, the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga, also expressed the importance of this work for the city: “I want to thank all the members of the Board of Trustees who accepted it so quickly, that they see so lucidly that this proposal would be key for the Liceu, but also for the Ramblas, Barcelona and Catalonia.” And she has added that “having art available to everyone makes it possible for citizens to know and value it. I am sure that these doors will awaken the love for art in many pedestrians, and in the spectators who pass through them to enjoy the opera in this important facility.”
For his part, the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Education, Science and Community of the Barcelona City Council, Jordi Martí, has emphasized above all the commitment of the Liceu to “link to contemporary artists of the city and to do it in a total and determined way, not just with a small gesture. Today we are opening three doors, but we will also be able to see Macbeth with the stage direction of Jaume Plensa.” Martí has insisted that the doors “improve the artistic environment of the Ramblas” and wanted to thank the artist for his “humble and restrained gesture because Constelaciones are integrated into the landscape and do not become an isolated work of art.”
After the institutional parliaments, the act has continued with the first official opening of the doors while the Coro del Gran Teatre del Liceu performed the Wagnerian piece Freudig begrüß en wir die edle Halle (Tannhäuser, act II) on the Rambla, directed by the director of the Choir, Pablo Assante, and accompanied on piano by David-Huy Nguyen-Phung. A piece from the second act of the Tannhäuser that celebrates the entrance of the guests and that wants to be a symbolic and metaphorical gesture of doors that invite the public to enter and enjoy the universal language that is music.
“The alphabet represents a harmony that celebrates the great diversity of the world,” said Plensa. The president of the fundación del Liceo, Salvador Alemany, has stated that the sculptor’s work is “a gift that gives prestige to the Rambla and the Liceo”.
No es la primera vez que el escultor dispone de una obra cerca de un núcleo cultural de la ciudad condal. Carmela, un rostro de cuatro metros, mitad niña y mitad adolescente, preside la fachada del Palau de la Música. El artista, Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas 2012, ha proyectado sus conocidos rostros en otras capitales como Madrid, (Julia) o New York (El alma del agua).
Plensa will maintain his relationship with the Liceo in the new season as the person in charge of the scenery of the Macbeth of Verdi, que se estrenará el próximo febrero.
Technical and operating elements
As for the technical details, these doors weigh around 500 kilograms each and migrate on a single axis that is embedded at the start of the arch just above the capital; of the pilasters. The convexity of the doors does not exceed the outer plane of the pilasters and means that the minimum passage below the open sheepfold is about 3 m high. One of the characteristics of the structure is that the doors do not open laterally, but have an opening movement from bottom to top. In this way, in addition to physical sculpture, we also seek a set of dialogues with spaces, reflections and optical visions of light and shadow. Thus, all those who walk the ground of the Rambla will be able to walk on this carpet of shadows of the installation itself. The work is integrated without affecting any other past element incorporated prior to the facade of Oriol Mestres from 1874 and recovered in 2019.
