Inmoderatus

Tonia Trujillo nurtures the hope of obtaining alternative perspectives that defy and challenge the established order with Crossing The Line (Cruzar la línea). Her work attempts to shed light on the manipulation to which we are subjected to by power structures, “what is not seen”, and the importance of building our own knowledge without getting carried away by trends or politically correct thinking.

Her work delves into the social character of art, supported conceptually by the philosophers Adorno and Horkheimer, for whom authentic art must be configured as a place of resistance. In this way, it opens the door to a world of worlds without conditions.

Although it is easy to identify which works correspond to which artist, this exhibition denotes unity, teamwork and reflection between people who have previously collaborated together and who know each other’s work well.

We could therefore say, that no physical, conceptual or ideological borders are established in the exhibition space since, in spite of occupying specific zones, the entirety of the artworks dialogue and are lifted up by this profoundly balanced cross-border interchange.

In fact, we see in the work of Trujillo, that in addition to looking at the concept of balance, the concept of border is also revised, proposing a new dimension to perceiving it by claiming it not as a place of passage or as a metaphor of division, but as a zone that belongs to all; the border as a shared place with the possibility of living there in harmony. Thus, the four works breathe and roam in fitting proportion and reciprocation.

The work of Elisa Torreira, both gathers and shelters in the enormous exhibition space and seems to advance towards the sea, as if leaving a mountainous mass behind. It evokes in us rocky seawalls and silky sand.

There is something astonishingly intriguing about this seascape, inviting us to be trapped by that ancestral force that leads us to the sea, from the general to the particular and vice versa, floating in a tangle of handmade objects, full of intimacy.

Where harshness serves to invoke sweetness, we find spherical wool forms that seem to create an organic fabric. The works pulse and throb, containing in essence water, earth, and the void that holds the incessant waiting of those people who assume that living is adapting to change, that the beach is sometimes a desert with sandstorms, and that the tide goes up and down but always flows.

Waiting for The Tide (Esperando la marea) is an aesthetic project that hauls shipwreck treasures to our shore transforming objects into poetry. All forms of matter have a complex structure, an infinite diversity of properties and internal and external connections.

In the surrounding world, we observe an infinite number of objects and phenomena that possess the most diverse properties, independent of the way that have come to us, a product of chance or not. What do all those objects and phenomena represent? What is their base? Do we tend to accumulate them more and more?

Kae Newcomb works to educate respect for the environment, creating work directly related to ecology and aspects in need of urgent revision. Adorno spoke of the disintegration of materials, Newcomb delves into the fact that we share resources like water and air, but we do not share the costs of its mismanagement, working with materials that refer to the organic to subtly point out these problems on a large scale and equate them with a more humane scale.

Isabel Cuadrado takes up an open path in this sense with Traces (Trazas), a project begun as a collaboration with the People’s Museum of Asturias. The artist draws silhouettes of objects from the collection to give a perspective using a mixture of ethnographic objects (from the Museum) and technological objects (now). In this way, it incorporates silhouettes of technological elements that refer to the gestures that make us dependent on multiple objects throughout the day.

Traces brings out into the open the paradoxical reading that we now adapt ourselves to our tools, unlike in the distant past where our tools were designed to adapt to our bodies. This is appreciated comparatively, that is, if we look at the various objects that the artist lets us intuit from their silhouettes, we will feel the void of those bodies, those of all of us, coexisting.

Kant spoke of the object as the result of thinking about what is given through sensitive intuition, external to the subject. We identify the fluctuating objects in the work of Cuadrado in a play of lights and shadows that the spectator savors slowly, establishing in the mind relationships or activities in order to imagine the purpose of the object. Time in the work of this artist is a very relevant component.

The passing of time modifies objects as much as the sea is able to model a stone over years and years completely changing its shape. The accumulation of waste in places that most think are no man´s lands; building lots, fast-paced border areas where we try not to look, where the abandoned object abounds, is a problem which affects the environment and the deepest of our condition human.

Kae Newcomb works to educate respect for the environment, creating work directly related to ecology and aspects in need of urgent revision. Adorno spoke of the disintegration of materials, Newcomb delves into the fact that we share resources like water and air, but we do not share the costs of its mismanagement, working with materials that refer to the organic to subtly point out these problems on a large scale and equate them with a more humane scale.

The work wakes us up and alerts us to a liquid toxicity in a world contaminated inside and out and that screams for a commitment. Newcomb expresses through techniques such as drawing, sculpture and installation the concerns about the lack of recognition of the problem of climate change and the dissatisfaction with the policies that are currently being carried out at present given and which are not sufficient.

In short, Tonia Trujillo, Elisa Torreira, Isabel Cuadrado and Kae Newcomb transmit here their concerns by combining voices with multiple artistic languages that complement and communicate in the exhibition spaces, provoking reflections apparently spontaneous and yet very meditated, in an exercise of activism from the sublime of the object that captures and draws towards the esthétique relationnelle.