| Anne-Marie Schneider
Born in Chauny, France, in 1964.
Lives and works in Paris.
Benjamín Álvarez Llano
Born in A Fonsagrada in 1957.
Holds a degree in Fine Arts.
David Renaud
Born in Grenoble, France, on 25 February 1965.
Lives and works in Paris.
This is all very cosmopolitan!
Who says that art has lost the soul it once had? Just look at this gathering of skulls and cripples, or rather, this inverted Tower of Babel, given the underground and somewhat pandemonic nature of the place that now haunts Espai 13…
As for respectable folk – well, you know the drill. Their identity shifts from one country to another: the distinguished Catalans, so prim and proper here, surrender to love on languid Oriental nights; handsome English people succumb to ambiguous Italians; Castilians are only well regarded in their own land… and as for the God-fearing Galicians, you’ll never know, when you meet them on the landing, whether they’re going up or coming down! As for the Russians…
There’s no doubt that we are dealing with very proper individuals, and God knows if they have anything better to do than concern themselves with others: learning to fly with a single wing, untying the knot in their trunk, putting their soul on the right way round, freeing themselves from an ironing board, explaining to Bosch’s odd little creature (who is never up to date) the latest in video games or heading off with the neighbour from the drawing opposite to the photographer for the next film poster.
In his encyclopaedia of living beings, the naturalist Buffon would have placed them at the bottom of the page, on the right, alongside unclassifiable creatures like whales and platypuses. Like the latter, each inhabitant of Espai 13 possesses a biosystem and an ecosystem that allow them to live according to laws known only to themselves. Yet none reject encounters with other worlds, because they know they themselves have emerged from a heterogeneous imagination where dream and reality, past and present, remain interchangeable elements. There is no need to defend them – they require no such thing. Instead, we should take inspiration from them to counter this urge to clarify everything, which has become one of the weaknesses of our time. Enough! Let’s stop trying to fit everything into neat compartments and accept, once and for all, what we do not understand! Let us marvel at the infinite diversity of humankind! Let us heed Proust: “It is better to dream one’s life than to live it, but then again, is not living it already a form of dreaming?”
Mónica Regàs
1“…At times, you are more the devil to each other than we ourselves…”
Francisco de Quevedo, Dream of the Last Judgement.
2“But what frightened me most was seeing the bodies of two or three merchants who had put on their souls the wrong way round and had all five senses in the nails of their right hand.”
Ibid.
3 “…one (soul) was missing an arm, another an eye, and it made me laugh to see the variety of forms. I marvelled at God’s providence, for though they were all shuffled together, none mistakenly put on the legs or limbs of their neighbours.”
Ibid. |
