14th June 2023
Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma presents “Paths in the Afternoon. Initiation in the Woods”, an exhibition by Álvaro Perdices curated by Horacio Fernández, which opens to the public on Thursday 15 June at 7 p.m. and can be visited at Es Baluard Museu’s Space D from 16 June until 1 October 2023. On the other hand, the Museum organises an exclusive visit for Friends of Es Baluard with the artist and the curator on 15 June at 6 pm.
“Paths in the Afternoon. Initiation in the Woods” is a site-specific installation based on a set of photographs that the artist took during a few weeks of volunteering at the Ses Milanes forest-school (Bunyola, Mallorca) in the summer of 2020.
The project is presented as a clearing in the forest, as a place of learning, of revelation. The children of Ses Milanes are present, they inhabit the clearing, but they are not shown. The installation appeals to the memory of the spectator, who was also a child and at school enjoyed the playground more than the classroom. There are latent and invisible presences that are easy to imagine and feel. The images, the forest, take over the walls of the exhibition room, occupying the space, integrating the spectator.
The exhibition is completed with an additional piece, called Genealogía [Genealogy], consisting of a sequence of images, documentation of the forest-schools in Spain and other countries, as well as some projects in which the artist is currently involved in.
Horacio Fernández, curator of the exhibition explains that “with this constructed space, there is an attempt to suggest the surprise of the forest clearing. The intention is that that the exhibition take the viewer outside of the museum for a while, or even a step further: that he or she might take a brief break from everyday urban experience. During these months of intense heat, perhaps this will be a breath of fresh air. Something more than a space surrounding the viewer, the clearing in the woods is where visitors are invited to stop and place themselves in suspense”.
Artist’s reflections on the exhibition:
“Paths in the Afternoon: Initiation in the Woods” is a site-specific installation created for one of the gallery spaces at Es Baluard. Being specific to a given location will always be a challenge, just as it also involves commitment to the nature of the work and the conceptual framework, the site where the work is found. It is an aspect that increasingly concerns me, and something I seek to insist upon, perhaps because when something is specific it becomes possible to have a more genuine, intimate and personal experience. In other words, the possibility to go home with something, which should not be understated.
The group of photographs I am showing were made during various weeks working as a volunteer at the Ses Milanes nature school, in Bunyola, Mallorca, in the summer of 2020.
The project was conceived using this material, thinking of the value and experience of a natural setting as an experimental, pedagogical site for growth. The images are displayed on three walls. On the first (the wall that we never see when entering, because it is always behind us), a large forested area is engulfing us.
On the second wall, the images separated by thin white lines become a sequence, a route that shows us various clearings in the woods. Sites where things have taken place. If we look carefully amongst the foliage or on the floor, we can trace actions that refer to the liveability of these places, which indeed we pertain to. We do not encounter figures, like those that move amongst classical landscapes, but the indication of activity and the archaeological quality are evident.
At the end of the room, on the third wall, with four images emphasising perspective, we can perceive the way out of these forest meadows, yet only by passing through sites of experience and knowledge. In other words: spaces where the body is called to action. Surprisingly, an image that we have left behind us appears again. In this case, as project curator Horacio Fernández suggests, a shin bone, a rod of power or a guide stick lies forgotten on the ground.
The photographs are accompanied by a fourth wall, a mirror where these images and the reflections of visitors to the room are seen. The textured flooring invites us to seat on it, stretching into various photographs on the wall. By sitting on the floor, the visitor’s gaze is adjusted to the height of the camera, while also corresponding to the approximate eye height of the boys and girls at Ses Milanes.
A further piece, entitled Genealogía [Genealogy], bids us farewell, while connecting again with the exhibition. It is found outside of the room, in the exterior hallway, and composed of a sequence of images made with the work of artists from other periods, texts by various authors and passers-by, historical documentation on nature schools in Spain and elsewhere, as well as various previous and current projects I am currently involved in. This line of work seeks to show a visual ecosystem and the various ideas I am engaged with.
BIOGRAPHY
Álvaro Perdices (Madrid, 1971) is a visual artist who has developed his career and training in Los Angeles, has worked at the Museo Nacional del Prado and has participated in several educational and curatorial projects. Throughout his career, he has experimented in parallel with both institutions: academic and cultural, always paying attention to the complex relationship established between the latter and the individual. His line of research focuses on the construction of spaces that – establishing themselves as a crack – make possible behaviours, attitudes or disobediences that pass through the periphery, problematise normativity and question that which escapes the institution.
