Conversations by Marina Amaral, Maria e Andre, Adrien Cavallin & Elise Vlaminck. Thursday, 29th of July.

With Conversations the artists highlights various current issues: from the limits of society in imposing a status of success, appearance, competition, from the problem of existential and territorial “borders”, the relation between the urban and emotional space, the bewildered gaze, a window on our daily routine of life, the origin and aesthetics of the materials found in nature, their essence and spirituality.

The emerging artists, winners of the Prize of the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Brussels, (ARBA-ESA/ESPRONCEDA) converse with their own self, their intimacy, question themselves, reflect, and let the spectator travel with them, and on the other hand they dialogue with the space, the city of Barcelona and social and existential issues. An interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary exhibition that creates a dialogue between sculpture, painting, textiles, art, urbanism and architecture. A dialogue that crosses the different artistic disciplines, challenging the existential and material space, challenging their limits, the artistic process and human existence itself. Over the centuries, art has always questioned, scrutinized, provoked reality, the mirror of what we are in a specific period of history. Freedom of thought must cross those limits that we impose on ourselves and that society imposes on us, art must make us talk, reflect, think, not give answers but only questions, with the aesthetic of thought captured by the eye of those who are capable of seeing beyond our own borders. The artists with “Conversations” lead us along this path.

Adrien Cavallin challenges himself, his being an artist and society, he has no answers but only questions. His work does not want to be provocative but reflective, to ask questions, to stop and understand if we are living in a society where in the name of the image, of success, we have lost our freedom, and as artists the question that arises is: we are free or just a reflection of what society imposes on us? His sculpture is transformed into thought, narration, between installations and unspoken words, of what each of us is afraid of being or not being.

Marina Amaral crosses her history, her origins to question not only territorial but also existential borders, on the fears and limits that each of us has hidden in the depths of our soul. She questions the relationship between man and space, between urban, architecture and emotional living. Her walking is transformed into her feeling the space, the streets of the city of Barcelona and her being, in a dialogue that leads her not only to an intimate reflection with herself but in a dialogue with the city and its inhabitants. Her installations are like processes of narration, emotions, architectural, urban and metaphysical elements, where the light guides us in parallel worlds, emotional maps of our becoming.

Elise Vlaminck chases the gaze, scrutinizing and observing a daily life that hides behind a window, a glass. A world made up of unknown characters, of lights and shadows, of presence and absence, of a life, a gesture that we can no longer see. With her work she wants to stop the viewer from looking at what we no longer see, she does it with the delicacy of her paintings, like a life behind a glass.

Maria E André during her period in Barcelona has developed a ritual practice around natural elements that she encountered. She gleaned and formed the concrete materials that surrounded her to better anchor herself. It is this common thread that materializes through the net and from which results a woven structure imbued with emptiness as a guide in his quest. She questions us about our own existence, our corporeality in relation to a dreamed space. The aesthetics of nature that she incorporates into the exhibition questions our survival. What do you want to catch, what is left when the gestures fade away.