EXHIBITION PLAN - GAS NATURAL FENOSA MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

GAS NATURAL FENOSA

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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
December 2010
LABYRINTH
June 2011

CD-ROM
Works by
Eugènia Balcells

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COLOR WHEEL

ACTIVITIES AN D DOCUMENTS
FREQUENCIES

MARBLE

SOUND RODS
FREQUENCIES
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RICE IS PLANTED

Documentary

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WITH RICE

FREQUENCIES
EUGÈNIA BALCELLS
EUGÈNIA BALCELLS

PERIODIC TABLE

Entrance

Avda. de Arteixo, 171. 15007 A Coruña (Spain). T +34 981 911 476.
www.macuf.com

Opening hours: 11:00 to 14:00 and 17:00 to 21:30.

Sunday and bank holidays 11:00 to 14:00.
Closed on Monday.
"I'm attracted to bridges, the connections between things... as a result I have
explored so many different avenues; I identify more with the going from here to
there than with the straightforward being here or there... reality is the flow of the
whole which is absolutely interconnected. Technology is nothing more than a
possibility of opening new windows; every time the technological spectrum has
expanded our sense of reality and how to see it have stretched accordingly."
(interview with Alfonso López Rojo, Lápiz Magazine, 1993)
"I believe that life is the movement and the journey... a journey that goes
everywhere and goes nowhere in which we travel and explore, it is a multiple trip
involving scouting out, exploring inward, meeting others, interacting and also
forgetting..." (interview with Rosa Olivares, Lápiz Magazine, 1995)
LABYRINTH
“If art does not nourish you, it s useless. This nourishment can enhance our
happiness, our beauty, our strength." (interview with Mercè Beltran, La Vanguardia,
August 1, 2000)
"Working with the huge, while learning to be still in the middle of it: this is the best
part of technology... It is very important to know what light is because it s linked to
reality, all reality could be seen as a hologram." (conversations in the studio, 2009)
After a long career using light as a tool, Eugènia Balcells proposed paying tribute
to the constituent elements of matter and the complexity and beauty of the tissue
that they are capable of producing intertwining their range of colour.
Ancient wisdom and modern technology gather in the rotating screens that the artist
has created as projection surfaces. She has been slowly weaving on them stories of
stories and films of films that allow to perceive light as the voice of the matter and to
travel with it the world of images in which we are immersed.
The history of the Arts, Sciences and Philosophy were coming together on this
project which has the installation FREQUENCIES as a preface giving name to the
entire exhibition, the installation COLOR WHEEL as its centre, and the installations
LABYRINTH and MARBLE as its first gleams.
COLOR WHEEL
The current configuration includes the documentary film unpublished until today
RICE IS PLANTED WITH RICE, that contains the response from various school
institutions to the exhibition on the occasion of its presence in Barcelona (Arts
Santa Mònica, Fall 2009).
The complexity of the project, which is now hidden in the apparent simplicity of its
final form, is included in the catalogue of FREQUENCIES in two distinctive records.
On the one hand, in the selection of images and the specific articles relating to
each of the installations; on the other hand, in a selection of thoughts, doubts,
findings and difficulties which all along the process of creation, the artist
recognized in conversations with friends and colleagues.
www.eugeniabalcells.com
http://frecuenciasenmacuf.blogspot.com/
MARBLE
The cause of the coming-into-being of all things is the atomic whirl. Democritus
Particles invisible to human eyesight, the atoms, are already complex structures
sending and receiving light, capable of intermixing to form the visible world. Every
rock, every plant, every animal and every person contains within an infinite
combination of beams of light.
The installation FREQUENCIES celebrates this initial energy source from which
everything comes to be and pays tribute to the mystery hidden within the matter
that the artistic sensibility and scientific curiosity strive to uncover.
... the Sun is just a bell whose sound emanates light. Isaac Newton
Light gives life to the matter and triggers the processes of perception that living
beings are capable of. Light allows the existence of images and at the same time
gives rise to the metaphor that best describes the process of knowledge.
COLOR WHEEL is a sophisticated receptor gadget of the most diverse mutations
that involves the travel of light. It shapes a book of white screens suspended in
space, which briefly reflect the traces of light trapped in the filmed images; through
such procedure the memory of the universe it´s written.
COLOR WHEEL pursues this ultimate source of memories and makes visible the
constant change of reality on the permanently curious retina.
A single anchor point for everything that flows.
There are not fixed locations in space. Albert Einstein
Among the absolute darkness and the bright sunlight, the colors define the shape
and multiple profiles of reality. Shadows are faithful witness to the constant
movement: they are recording time.
LABYRINTH refers to a point in the geography of Barcelona: one in which North
and South, front and rear, coming and going become indistinguishable. LABYRINTH
is a place of places in which reality, as well as knowledge, finds blind holes and
clarity avenues.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Michelangelo
Excavating a stone mountain hidden in the basis of the earth until it becomes an
open quarry and extracting from the bottom of the wound boulders that reflect the
jumble of colours we call white. A furrow in the Portuguese region of Alentejo.
MARBLE refers to the cluster and the well, to a place where you can find the
hardness of the material and the subtlety of the symbol, to the crossing point in
which life meets death, to how memory is the raw material to any human act.
Sound frequencies accompany the frequencies of light. The energy that moves the
universe is overwhelming; as images that escape from the screens, as sound that is
prolonged through vibration.
FREQUENCIES by Eugènia Balcells is an invitation to recognize the whole in its
parts. It is a concert of light bells which a number of visitors have already
responded to. Its voice is reflected in the film RICE IS PLANTED WITH RICE, that has
been incorporated into the project to tour with it.
Eulàlia Bosch
Curator