Un álbum Exhibition

1. Tuesday, February 15, 2022. A table with silverware is laid out in the gallery. A dinner, a menu and a glossary.
Six diners, six notebooks, a tape recorder and a still camera.
No witnesses, no mobile phones, no instructions nor expectations.

Everything that happens during the evening will fade into memory, except for the documents that the guests decide to make in the form of writing, images or sound recordings. If they so wish.

The traces of a shared table will also remain: crumbs on the tablecloth, half- finished glasses and crumpled napkins. Most likely.

Based on these remnants, the artist Mercè will forensically collect the ideas and documentation that will allow her to create an art piece in the form of a book. Seguramente.

2. To Alicia’s displeasure, the books are composed of texts, consisting of words, made up of letters.

The table that welcomes guests is full of inscriptions: words embroidered on the tablecloth, engraved on glasses and cutlery or carved into the porcelain.

Eat me, drink me, read me.

They are part of a unique glossary, a brief list of words that the artist wishes to share with her guests. She likes them for how they sound or what they mean, but in particular, because they are linked to her biography. They all remind her of a place, a time or a specific person. That’s why this printed glossary

is displayed at the table. Do the guests have similar experiences that recall certain words? Will they share them? Do they imagine words in the same way, colour or shape?

The glossary is an appetizer to spark conversation. Of course, letters will come with the soup.

3. If only every evening started as a game and ended with a book.

But there are many kinds of books and infinite ways to break the rules.

In this encounter everything feels at the same time strange and familiar; orchestrated and unpredictable; secret, domestic and public; discreetly unheimlich. Strangers sharing a table, bread and wine, in front of a cupboard. On the other side, only a glass window separates them from the street. Passer- by can have a look at the dinner, and yet only what the guests decide to record will remain: fragments of a night; carefully placed leftovers that will allow a reconstruction of the meaning. This may be the task for the artist.

4.There is a form of Roman mosaic, commonly known as the ‘Unswept Floor’, which depicted the remains of any kitchen or feast: lobster claws, chicken bones, nut shells, and often a little mouse sniffing around the remains. According to their superstitions, the food that fell to the ground was not to be picked up, for it was claimed by the deceased, often buried under the same house. The tradition took shape in this strange artistic genre, which seems to vindicate the idea that no remains are completely lost, for they are the origin of another cycle, another process.

An unmade bed or an uncleared table can also be a starting point. 5. Things worth remembering are always scarce.

6. There is something esoteric and demiurgic about orchestrating experiences to flesh out ideas.

It is a strange form of exchange, which is how creativity should be defined.

Your glossary in exchange for mine. And some words will never be the same again. How else can we grow?

7. There is no reason to list this text, except my love for lists.

Andrés Hispano

Curator