Lunar travel

Written by Manolo Garcia

  • Exhibition: “El Final de las Apariencias”
  • Location: Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona.
  • Dates: From May 5 to September 23, 2011

lt’s all about doing whatever possible to make the unquestionable lightness of being more bearable. And in front of a piece of paper, a canvas or a table, one discovers that some people manage.

lt’s a question of lunar travel. To wander on the dark side of the moon on a pure Pink Floyd trip, from 1973. Capturing the fizzle of a flash of neon in the profound darkness of the uncertain place that is our mind. Moving closer to the flickering of fluorescent souls that have never abandoned the foray, as they follow and abandon the path, finding and losing themselves, recovering. In the background, a soundtrack, the incessant guitar playing of early Rolling Stones, a wasted Jimmy Hendrix, that floats freely while the artist offers us refuge in a vanishing point, a shadowy blur.

Julio Vaquero - Vídeo

Wanted, with no thought of the reward. ls that it? Just for the pure pleasure of the delirium, the headlong gallop. The wonder of the hours spent composing in a room, in the centre of a large modern city, harbouring the serene spirit of a distant but not forgotten Gutenberg. Dedicated to his work, like the old charcoal burner, isolated for months in his beloved wood groves fulfilled and yet at the same time taking refuge; like the tenacious cabinetmaker, an angel labouring over his everyday chores.

It is heartening to know that someone jumps out of bed on winter mornings with an imperious need to get back to work, to the fascination of the piece. To the recounting of secret corners that have been drawn on paper, on a wall of sensations in two or more dimensions; or even of those as yet unknown. Who has the urgency to envelop his ideas in gold leaf.

To persevere, persevering even with the knowledge that the final aim is uncertain but that one can never stop to console oneself.
Behind the cold walls of an industrial warehouse, magmas are elaborated shimmering lights are sculpted with the hammer and anvil of desire, in a calmly desperate but desperately tenacious prophetic search.

The foundry of nothing more than benevolent and untainted empires, where what is accumulated and enlarged are precious instants of eternity, condensed in a trace, in colour that overflows, fluid drops that run free, dribbling with life.

And the creator, almost godlike in his enterprise enables whoever contemplates and immerses himself to reach these dizzy heights. Lunar travel, a pure Pink Floyd trip.

Manolo García
Barcelona, May 2011