José María Guijarro
17 Dec 2011 - 21 Jan 2012
JOSÉ MARÍA GUIJARRO
Brackish Water
17 December, 2011 - 21 January, 2012
Fúcares Gallery presents a solo show by José María Guijarro (1953, Torre de Juan Abad, Ciudad Real) in its space in Madrid. The main theme of the works is the voyage to Ithaca as a metaphor for a longed-for place that is always just a little further away, the destination that is never quite reached. Journey to Ithaca by way of the stormy sea, a journey currently evoked by the new Sub-Saharan Argonauts who apparently make Ulysses' voyage in the opposite direction.
In the beginning of The Odyssey, Athena laments to Zeus: "It is for Odysseus my heart is wrung--so subtle a man and so ill-starred; he has long been far from everything that he loves, desolate in a wave-washed island, a wooded island, the navel of all the seas. A goddess has made her dwelling there whose father is Atlas the magician; he knows the depths of all the seas, and he, no other, guards the tall pillars that keep the sky and the earth apart." Calypso constrains Ulysses with her charms urging him to forget Ithaca. "But Ulysses yearns to see even the smoke rising from his native land and longs for death."
The legend of the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship doomed to sail the oceans of the world without ever reaching port, is another image underlying this exhibition. In this legend, Ithaca is nowhere, and hardly exists in time because it is always later.
Isn't that how life is? Isn't that how art is? Paraphrasing Samuel Becket, art is the desire to express something we cannot express, because there is nothing to express, or we do not know what it is, but it is our destiny to express it. Literally Becket says that "art is the expression that there is nothing to express".
In this exhibition José María Guijarro presents some drawings of the human body in the form of sculpture or, what amounts to the same thing, some wooden sculptures of the human body that are still drawings. And along with these works, the choreographer Soo-Jin Heil will perform "Wellengan" (Passage of Waves). Soo-Jin and her husband Heinrich Heil have been sharing the "voyage" on the path of art with Guijarro since the end of last century and this collaboration has given rise to works such as "Pas de deux", “Ferne” or the performance "Next Station" (2010) at the CAB of Burgos, the video of which will be shown during the exhibition.
Brackish Water
17 December, 2011 - 21 January, 2012
Fúcares Gallery presents a solo show by José María Guijarro (1953, Torre de Juan Abad, Ciudad Real) in its space in Madrid. The main theme of the works is the voyage to Ithaca as a metaphor for a longed-for place that is always just a little further away, the destination that is never quite reached. Journey to Ithaca by way of the stormy sea, a journey currently evoked by the new Sub-Saharan Argonauts who apparently make Ulysses' voyage in the opposite direction.
In the beginning of The Odyssey, Athena laments to Zeus: "It is for Odysseus my heart is wrung--so subtle a man and so ill-starred; he has long been far from everything that he loves, desolate in a wave-washed island, a wooded island, the navel of all the seas. A goddess has made her dwelling there whose father is Atlas the magician; he knows the depths of all the seas, and he, no other, guards the tall pillars that keep the sky and the earth apart." Calypso constrains Ulysses with her charms urging him to forget Ithaca. "But Ulysses yearns to see even the smoke rising from his native land and longs for death."
The legend of the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship doomed to sail the oceans of the world without ever reaching port, is another image underlying this exhibition. In this legend, Ithaca is nowhere, and hardly exists in time because it is always later.
Isn't that how life is? Isn't that how art is? Paraphrasing Samuel Becket, art is the desire to express something we cannot express, because there is nothing to express, or we do not know what it is, but it is our destiny to express it. Literally Becket says that "art is the expression that there is nothing to express".
In this exhibition José María Guijarro presents some drawings of the human body in the form of sculpture or, what amounts to the same thing, some wooden sculptures of the human body that are still drawings. And along with these works, the choreographer Soo-Jin Heil will perform "Wellengan" (Passage of Waves). Soo-Jin and her husband Heinrich Heil have been sharing the "voyage" on the path of art with Guijarro since the end of last century and this collaboration has given rise to works such as "Pas de deux", “Ferne” or the performance "Next Station" (2010) at the CAB of Burgos, the video of which will be shown during the exhibition.