The exhibition is a dialogue between two artists, perhaps two poets with two independent pieces that share the same space, Spolia Haus, perhaps they are unknowingly plundering a new space in the center of Madrid.
Two works that speak to us about memory, breathing, entering and leaving, life and death.

We begin with the work La Carencia by Analía Villanueva. In this installation, temporality, ephemerality and disintegration are manifested through a series of slides that capture happy moments: vacations, birthdays, family gatherings, landscapes. However, these images do not belong to any known family album, but are found, anonymous material. The viewer is invited to tour the work, projecting themselves into those unknown but intimate images at the same time.

The work poses a break when these images, static like immaculate memories, begin to fade organically in front of the viewer’s eyes. This irreversible process of destruction turns the viewer into a witness of a memory that will never exist in that form again. As González Requena mentions, «Distance as a constitutive element of the spectacle is revealed to us as a trace of a lack… the viewer experiences this destruction in person.»

The plastic-coated slides, associated with the imperturbability of time, reveal the place for oblivion, thus raising a reflection on the fragility of memory and constancy. Lack leads us to question the possibility of reducing time and memory to a static image, opening a dialogue about the impossibility of freezing the passage of time.

On the other hand, we have the work Apnea by Antone Israel. In this expanded cinema installation, the figure of the swimmer emerges as an intermediary between the visible and the hidden. The mechanical ballet of the automatic loading of the projector gives consistency to the image of the swimmer who catches his breath, immersing himself again and again in the filmic space that separates vision from blindness. In this loop without a stitch, Apnea invites us to reflect on the relationship between perception and reality, exploring the limits of the visible and the invisible in the context of expanded cinema.

By confronting these two works in this industrial space, which in turn contains the memory of Madrid, of a trade that has already disappeared, of walls that in themselves speak to us, a dialogue is established between the fragility of memory, and exploration. of the limits of perception. Each work invites us to reflect on the ephemeral nature of life and the inevitable march of time, exploring the beauty and complexity of what surrounds us.

Text: Mario Gutiérrez Cru