Llaga de mar, alivio de monte is the title that encompasses the two simultaneous exhibitions that, from 26 September, will occupy the four rooms of the gallery. Both in Laura Palau’s proposal,
Segunda mordida, como en Amuleto, la exposición de Javi Cruz, acompañado en esta ocasión por
Andrés Izquierdo, nos encontramos en medio de un diálogo entre lugares —físicos, simbólicos—,
paisajes tan autobiográficos como universales: las tierras de cultivo, los mares, un teatro, la ciudad
y el monte, y con algunas historias, tradiciones, supersticiones y rituales que sujetan vínculos en
la familia, la amistad y los oficios. Ambas exposiciones se acompañan de los textos del comisario
Francisco Ramallo.
In Ramallo’s words, Amuleto constitutes a touch of “knuckles”, like the sea and the countryside, orbicular. An attentive sliver that metamorphoses into a cloud, an eye, a butterfly, a boat, a moon, a petal, a star or a lighthouse. Amuleto has its origins in the experience that the field of performance has brought to Javi Cruz, a semantic space between the sea and the stage, which the artist approaches as a meeting point between the tragic, the mythological and superstition as a shared fear. Cruz paints landscapes from life that are interiors of theatres where he has performed, trips in a boat with friends, or elusive Castilian clouds. He then fills these paintings with burrs previously cast in silver, as if the canvases had gone to the countryside and returned. In a sinalific exercise, the clouds become moons, sometimes made of plaster, sometimes of silver cast on brass, and assembled together. Javi Cruz is accompanied by Andrés Izquierdo, who refers to ‘Shipwreck’, the chapter in the book in which Julian Barnes studies Géricault’s La balsa de la Medusa, as well as the aesthetic and political decisions behind the painting. There he discovers that in the end he did not paint a butterfly, a prophetic element that now rests on structures that the artist constructs to establish a dialogue between fragility and fury. In this concatenation of elastic forms, signifiers or objects to which supernatural virtues can be attributed, another appears that relates to the performance space, a ghostlight device that refers back to the preamble of the project. As an element of a prophylactic nature that remains lit in the gallery space when it is closed, the piece acquires a centripetal, ocular, orientative, desiring, maritime function.
Glosario
+Curatorial text by Francisco Ramallo.
Activity carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture.
