ESPRONCEDA – Institute of Art & Culture is pleased to present the exhibition “Art of Confinement” by the Astillero Espacio Cultural of Barcelona. The collective exhibition was born thanks to the idea of Carles Guitart. In keeping with Espronceda’s philosophy of opening its doors to local artists and local associations, this initiative reflects its spirit of collaboration and cooperation with the local community.
Exhibition date: from December 10th to 19th, 2020
Opening: December 10th from 7 pm to 9 pm
Gallery opening hours: from Tuesday to Saturday | 4 pm – 8 pm
Tickets HERE
Artists involved:
Pere L. Campins, Mariana Mizarela, Pablo Peñalba, Eva Alonso, Eduard Anta, Esteban
Cornacchia, Raúl González, Arturo Lacal, Margherita Albanesi, Susanne Wehmer, Carles
Guitart.
Trapped energies, delayed expressions, letters without stamps, silenced needs, restrained concerns, shelved brushes, machines on standby, perceptions and sensitivities in flight mode, all this under the long shadow of impotence, of precaution you end up questioning, without any certainty of the captivity’s duration, waiting for the opportunity to open the door, to turn on the light, to pedal again, to sharpen pencils and open paint tubes, desiring to see entire faces, to uncover expressions, to open the window and let the air in, to go out, to show ourselves, to open the box and let everything out, to show what we’ve done these days, and to transform everything occurred into a briefing, a report, silenced art, a feeling of impotence for those who have gone, a promise to restart, to go back, to unleash at last the art of the lockdown.
ARTISTS’ BIOS
PERE L. CAMPINS
The Mallorcan artist does not paint pictures; rather he makes them as poets and sculptors made their works in ancient times. His paintings are usually composed of lines, stains, objects, papers and plastics together with iron wires and other materials. What he seeks is to sew, to link, to relate certain feelings, concerns and affections to his present: the work.
MARIANA MIZARELA
Passionate about collage technique and the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, she collects vintage photographs and combines techniques ranging from painting to animation. She also has a deep interest in drawing, where she lets her imagination expand into new worlds. Her references are biographical in nature or drawn from global experiences. For this exhibition she presents drawings made throughout the confinement, when we all felt trapped in our homes — far apart, yet sharing the same feelings.
PABLO PEÑALBA
Buenos Aires, 1981. Currently lives in Spain. Trained in graphic design and photography at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Degree in illustration at the Llotja School of Arts and Crafts in Barcelona. “My work is dirty realism of human emotions.”
EVA ALONSO
“No tears please, it’s a waste of good suffering” is the title of her latest project, an exercise in association that combines texts and concepts from cinema, literature and music within the same genre — terror and violence — with religious representations throughout history. The result is a set of satirical drawings and paintings that, in addition to ridiculing the mystical sentiment, constitute a kind of homage to the grotesque.
EDUARD ANTA
Born in Barcelona in 1984, he studied painting and sculpture at the Massana School of Art and Design. He works mainly in oil painting. Hyper-realistic, surreal, symbolic, fantastic and dreamlike. A painter of detail, patience, memory, nostalgia and neatness. During quarantine, he carried out a pencil photocopy exercise.
ESTEBAN CORNACCHIA
Building on fieldwork in working-class neighbourhoods, he develops a painting practice in which all the ephemeral artistic expressions generated by these contexts appear. He searches the urban landscape for the stories in objects that end and begin. His subject is the city as an overlooked context, taking its architecture as a starting point. He portrays urban art, its graffiti, the textures, qualities and weight of materials such as iron, wood and cement, and the manifestation of the passage of time — its changes, mould, breaks and ruins. Urban archaeology and stories told through things.
RAÚL GONZÁLEZ
Specialising in acrylic on paper, the subject of his work is the fantasy genre. He draws inspiration from worlds created by literature, comics and science-fiction and horror films. In his work he aims to create an impact on the viewer, either through the use of colour palette or through images loaded with intensity. Sometimes these are images in which our reality is reflected in a distorted way; he believes that by adding a touch of realism to the fantasy genre the viewer feels more attracted and identified.
ARTURO LACAL
Co-creator of two stop-motion animation short films, “Ranaway” and “Ronquidos”, in which he participated as animator, director, art designer and character creator. He has also worked on visual arts projects, mainly painting, illustration and scenography in dance-theatre. He is currently a resident artist at La Volta, Girona.
MARGHERITA ALBANESI
Knotting and weaving for bodies and spaces. Margherita creates a world of textile objects, from fashion accessories to tapestries, blending the tactility of textile art with the colourful feeling of the mixed fibres and recycled materials she uses. Unexpected materials such as audio cables and other recycled objects blend with ropes, yarns, fabrics, branches and metal bars in a unique visual harmony.
CARLES GUITART
Carles Guitart develops a graphic language in which geometry is essential to seeking balance in composition, creating works in which the compartmentalisation of space serves the work as a whole. The result are works that invite us to reflect on the boundary between figuration and abstraction, using fragments of old canvases in which figuration is still present, juxtaposed in works that challenge the categorisation of abstraction and figuration. They are works made up of fragments of old canvases, parts of previous works, the second life of paintings, canvases with a double life, parts of lived works, lives divided into each fragment.