calendario eventi  :: 

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2/3/2011

Acte 19: Lluis Hortala'

Fundacio' Sunol, Barcelona

This work includes two recently produced DVD animations, Montserrat (2010) and Les Temptacions (2010), a series of six large-scale charcoal-on-canvas drawings, Exercitatori II (2010), and two bench sculptures.

These pieces are linked directly to the landscape: unmistakable images of the mountain of Montserrat as a visual and narrative motif. Their form turns tales of personal experiences into legends (the ‘story’ that provides the title to this exhibition). The eye’s vision is the mirror vision of amassed gazes.

The title Exercitatori is taken from the name of the first manual of methodological prayer to be edited and published in the vulgar tongue, written on Montserrat by García Jiménez de Cisneros. The basic idea: to describe the classical concept of the three ways in which, in ascending order, one can attain a life of spiritual knowledge. Cisneros uses the image of climbing a mountain as a metaphor for perfection and transmutes the individual eager for knowledge into a contemplative being. The subject of the narrative is reaching the state of contemplation (and enumerating the dangers on the way).

In the exhibition, I start with this idea as an active subject and draw parallels between the experience of climbing mountains (literally dangerous climbing) and this spiritual journey: the contemplative ascent through the senses, but in an inner landscape. Montserrat is a great glyptotheque, still today a museum of natural sculpture with hundreds of models to be analysed. I reconstruct and expand my personal climbing diaries and, by placing the drawings in the space at a remarkable height, I put the spectator in front of the work in an accessible yet tricky position. In the same way, Dos bancs (2010) supports an image of contemplation and gives meaning to the cultural context from where the work is viewed.

In all this work, especially in the two animations Montserrat and Les Temptacions, I have placed the greatest emphasis on the idea of forging ties with the story of modernity and great spiritual or geological tales. The aesthetic slant to the symbolic interpretation of some specific aspects of folklore and religion from these videos is full of contradictions and I think that as a narrative they work obscurely and unpredictably as an internal leitmotif.
Lluís Hortalà
January 2011

Lluís Hortalà. Olot, 1959

For twenty years, artist Lluís Hortalà has worked on sculpture and large-scale drawings that explore issues of perception based on orographic models. He took a keen interest in producing the London Mountains series of postcards (during his six years in London) and, in recent years, he has been fascinated by the iconography of the mountain of Everest and the rocks of Montserrat, linked to his personal experience as a climber. In these works, the artist finds new personifications to these mythical rocks through carefully prepared graphical and volumetric sessions to ‘reconstruct’ their image. In 1990, he started his series of pieces entitled ‘topologies of vision’ in wood, followed later by ceramic pieces linked to architecture, always understood as architecture of the body. His work has been exhibited at Sala Montcada (Barcelona), Fundació “la Caixa” (Barcelona), MNCARS (Madrid) and Fundação Gulbenkian (Lisbon), and he is currently preparing an extensive individual exhibition for CDAN (Huesca).

Opening: Mars 3rd, 2011, 19.30

Fundació Suñol
Passeig de Gràcia 98 - 08008 Barcelona
Hours:
Monday to Saturday, 16.00-20.00.
Closed on Sunday and bank holidays.
Other times can be arranged in advance.

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