L’any del desconcert (An Unexpected Year) encompasses the physical works of Belén Segarra, Laura Castelló, Rodrigo García and Noel Pascual Cándido, as either works in progress, already finished or rescued during 2020. It entails a collection that works as a constellation of feelings and wishes, our of the many possible ones, which originate from the catalogue of experiences left by the health emergency. There are works meditated in a moment of vital recapitulation, others carried out on the spur of the moment, and others which, like omens, had been lying in a drawer waiting for this in principle improbable event to make them stronger. In periods of unrest, the art sets itself as a dock where we anchor until the storm clears and, hopefully, a new reality is made out.
The works of these four artists from Castellón establish a metaphysical dialog in Les Aules.
While Segarra anchors the conscience in the series Tarot, Castelló draws horizons in Los Balcones. Pascual Cándido searches through other realities in Observando sin Observar and García brings fears and desires to the fore in s/n. The sum of it all constitutes the art that is characteristic of the year in which contemporary society blew up.
In these digital times in which curiosity borders poking about, Segarra, Castelló, García y Pascual Cándido recreate part of their studios in An Unexpected Year: a showing practice that allows visitors to go deeper into the artists’ spaces and their creative processes and to know the people and the motivations behind their work, how and what materials they used to make art out of an idea. Thus, artists and works are naked in the exhibition room. All of this is, in the middle of the unexpected contemporary world, a means for visitors to find referents in art to raise their spirits.
Belén Segarra
Belén Segarra presents Tarot, 2020, an illustrated series of the 22 Major Arcana created during this compulsory pause which, far from the external coming and going, she turned into a reflection to paint for herself once again. In Tarot, she combines the purity of color with nature to make up a mystical imaginary that aims to break up with all conventional logic by either fusing animal with human or by sprouting life from death. At the same time, she presents powerful feminine figures. According to the artist, her women stare while they allow themselves to go away; they can afford to be tired, bored or imperfect. Furthermore, Segarra also exhibits Monstruos, 2020 for the first time. These are works carried out without any sketches, ideas or preestablished colors, as the premise is to let her hands out and immerse in a process that is both liberating and honest when showing, through pictorial language, how order comes about from the explosions inside.
Laura Castelló
As its title implies, in Los Balcones (The Balconies), 2020, Laura Castelló puts forward a series of acrylic paintings that illustrates the conquest of these spaces in the last months. While life went on inside every home, everything else in the streets would stop, showing fear, nostalgia and desire. This forced temporary closing is expressed by Castelló not like a sad reminiscence, but as a tribute to those turning points for humanity, through the use of watercolor and India ink. From the effort to glorify these facts rises Il Dolce Far Niente, 2020: the pleasure of not doing anything as a response to the coming and going of immediacy and the disproportionate production that we were used to. These illustrations, like the philosophy of the Italian concept, call for a pause, for the introspection and, hence, for an appreciation of simple things and the relaxation without remorse.
Rodrigo García
Rodrigo García presents a collection of works under the title s/n (No Number), 2020 in which he imagines, from his confinement, the possibilities of a reunion or an eternal separation while body and life are stuck and only imagination remains. This experience of solitude and disconnection influences García’s desires, bringing his attention to any stimulus around him: a landscape, a person, the songs or works by Gabriel Hernández Walta or Jamie Hwelett,... García’s career has been influenced by a bond between artist and work, which is maximized when he defines himself as a vessel for experiences and feelings that his hand will translate into a physical medium.
Noel Pascual
In the series Observando sin Observar (Observing without Observing), Noel Pascual Cándido aims to glorify decadence and make beauty fade. It contains conceptual illustrations on a collage base inspired by the works of Joan Brossa, Chema Madoz, Sarah Illenberg, Isidro Ferrer or Pep Carrió. These are completed but unexhibited works, as a result of the lack of an impulse to put them on display. It was the unexpected confinement which revealed the conceptual transcendence of these collages that directly appeal to the visitors so that they figure out these and other hidden stories in every detail, gesture and action.