Islas y horizontes

On an island, the horizon is a constant reference point, the axis that supports realities, the magnetic pole of attraction where the end is the beginning and vice-versa; it is the metaphor for distance, or the geometry for the inner gaze. We come from an archipelago in the Mediterranean, a sea that is the cradle of civilisation in history, and in the present a platform for cruise liners and boats carrying refugees, for poetry and economics, with a pristine landscape or a skyline of hotels, with nostalgia and emotion.
The horizon line is a fiction for heaven and earth; it can be a barrier, the frontier between what is real and dreams, an abyss or a promise, utopia in the trench of an abysmal globe or the opening-up towards its infinity. This physical and mental line reveals the utopian constructions of the peripheries and the huge possibilities of a region that was preserved and exposed within itself for centuries, sheltered by the sea.

Saint Augustine insisted that to admire nature is to look towards the outside, or foris, as opposed to intus. From the Balearic Islands, at Es Baluard, as a leading regional museum, we are permanently mindful of our geographical coordinates, as a challenge and as an opportunity, immersed in history and looking to the future.

The container for the traces and marks of culture – the museum – is something like a large archive of things tangible and intangible, and the custody of heritage.

Es Baluard is a modern and contemporary art museum located in Palma, a great museum of the Balearic Islands, and it has a reserve of works linked to artists from the ambience of the islands and/or leading international artists. Es Baluard is a catalyst and transmitter of history, contemporary tendencies and training via programmes of exhibitions, activities and educational cycles, as well as being a space for research and a living laboratory for the analysis and production of present-day creative practices.

The museum’s collection is comprised of reserves belonging to Ajuntament de Palma, Consell de Mallorca, Govern de les Illes Balears, Fundació d’Art Serra, acquisitions of the Fundación Es Baluard, and deposits by relevant artists and collectors.With “Islands and Horizons” we present a selection of our work at CEART, organised arround the idea of the horizon and according to the common denominator of the evolution of local and international creative practices, with the aim of showing our work and articulating new networks and acts of collaboration, as a node and a radar. (Nekane Aramburu)