{"id":810,"date":"2024-09-26T10:53:45","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T10:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sergialvarez.com\/cuestion-de-distancia\/"},"modified":"2024-09-26T11:01:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T11:01:56","slug":"cuestion-de-distancia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sergialvarez.com\/en\/cuestion-de-distancia\/","title":{"rendered":"A question of distance \u2013 A*Desk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Days after seeing Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s exhibition M\u00eame mot<\/em> at the CRAC Alsace, I thought of these lines from a poem by Elizabeth Bishop:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abThe art of losing isn\u2019t hard to master;<\/p>

so many things seem filled with the intent<\/p>

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.\u00bb (1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Keys, the hours that pass by without meaning and without doing anything important, the places and people we have loved. \u201cThe art of losing is easily mastered,\u201d says Bishop, but it is through rehearsal, repetition and insistence that we acquire, you and I, the certainty that this loss is no disaster. Each loss is different but each loss also has something in common, the repetition that unites the identical with the different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s exhibition at the CRAC Alsace embraces this strategy of repetition of the same and the different, giving rise to a multiplicity of meanings through a similarity of forms. One of the most ingenious moments of the exhibition is the installation of La Velocidad<\/em> 1 (Velocity 1), a set of almost identical works in two adjacent rooms that manages to generate a very singular spatiotemporal estrangement. I have already been here but now, minutes later, I am back here again walking along a part that takes me away from where I was. Through these gestures and the repetition of certain forms and elements, as in the works Cambio de uso<\/em> (Change of Use) and Totonaca<\/em>, the reason for the title of the exhibition, M\u00eame mot<\/em>, the same word, becomes evident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that, at first, everything starts with a linguistic gesture, of using homonymy as an element from which a journey through the work in the exhibition can be perfectly organized. In that first moment in which language took on a certain prominence and is foregrounded (closer, nearer), I thought of some statements by Julia Sp\u00ednola that I read in the Lubric\u00e1n<\/em> catalogue, in which the artist evokes this linguistic dimension of a given moment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abWhen we say that \u2018something is something\u2019 we are automatically removing ourselves from the equation, we are cheating. On the other hand, when we say \u2018that rose seems red\u2019 then we make ourselves visible in the middle, as part of the becoming of things. There is a presence that is not limited to our form but which opens, mixes and returns, describing a more circular path. Tiqqun says: we have to be aware of what happens to us when we speak. You say \u2018the rose is red,\u2019 then you go back to your things, nothing has changed, but the rose is not red, the rose seems red. (\u2026) This also has a lot to do with the fact that I am very much in my eye, and being very much in my eye is perhaps being on the edge of language where one is already more exterior, more on the outside, where you dissolve, where you get lost.\u00bb (2)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

All this happens at the very first moment, or rather, at a more distant moment. What could be mere linguistics acquires a spatial dimension when we consider that the very meaning of homonymy includes a certain distance. Homonymy, strictly speaking, occurs between two words that are written or pronounced in a similar way but whose origins and meanings are distant. In this second moment, this closer moment, I think of the ideas that Julia Sp\u00ednola referred to during an intervention<\/a> on the occasion of her 2023 exhibition, Persona, foto, copia<\/em> (Person, Photo, Copy) at Artium Museoa, the institution in which this exhibition at CRAC Alsace was first held. Size depends on distance or proximity. A greater or lesser distance changes the size of things. Homonymy, the exercise that Julia Sp\u00ednola carries out throughout her work, puts distant elements on a similar plane, forms move away and come closer, while size is created by the gesture of coming closer or moving away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The words of Elfi Turpin, the curator and director of the CRAC Alsace, claimed that \u201cunderstanding Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s work consists more in practicing it than in commenting on it, grasping it in the primary sense of the term, that is, grasping its body.\u201d [3]<\/sup><\/a> To fully grasp Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s work, therefore, it is essential to actively engage with it, allowing the forms and meanings to be revealed through our direct and bodily interaction with the work, but also with the process. For this reason, the exhibition includes a publication, a sort of recipe book of workshops that the artist carried out at EINA (Barcelona), Centro Huarte (Pamplona), Artium Museoa (Vitoria-Gasteiz) and Ethall (Hospitalet), among others. These workshops, which form part of the mediation program of this exhibition, also propose a repetition, similar but different, to what they were originally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If in Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s poetry loss is worked on through repetition, Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s exhibition explores this reiteration, with similarity and difference as coexisting and complementary elements. The idea of \u200b\u200bvalue appears here, from the use of materials to the gesture of changing dimensions and of making objects large that would normally be smaller. Value, as we know, is a question of hierarchy, it is constituted by size and distance, and that is how Julia Sp\u00ednola subverts the terms. Distance does not have to be loss. What\u2019s more, affection always brings closer whoever (or whatever) is far away. The memory, the contact, the thought of a loved one will always create a light in infinite space that helps shelter us in the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) \u201cOne Art\u201d de Elizabeth Bishop in Poetry Foundation: https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/47536\/one-art<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2) Julia Sp\u00ednola in an interview with Marc Navarro, Sombra caracol. Una Conversaci\u00f3n en Madrid<\/em> (Snail Shadow: A Conversation in Madrid), in Lubric\u00e1n, Centro de Arte 2 de mayo, M\u00f3stoles, 2018, p. 69.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(3) Curatorial text<\/a> of M\u00eame mot<\/em>, Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s exhibition at the CRAC Alsace, by Elfi Turpin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art\u00edculo publicado en A*Desk el 29\/08\/2024<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Days after seeing Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s exhibition M\u00eame mot at the CRAC Alsace, I thought of these lines from a poem by Elizabeth Bishop: \u00abThe art of losing isn\u2019t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.\u00bb (1) Keys, the hours that pass by without meaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27],"tags":[63,61,31],"yoast_head":"\nA question of distance \u2013 A*Desk - Sergi \u00c1lvarez Riosalido<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Julia Sp\u00ednola\u2019s exhibition at the CRAC Alsace embraces this strategy of repetition, giving rise to a multiplicity of meanings.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sergialvarez.com\/en\/cuestion-de-distancia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A question of distance \u2013 A*Desk - 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