Diane Guyot & Pere Llobera at L21 Gallery

Artists: Diane Guyot, Pere Llobera

Exhibition title: Blown-up

Curated by: Bombon Projects

Venue: L21 Gallery, Mallorca, Spain

Date: July 24 – September 4, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and L21 Gallery, Mallorca

It seems that Miquel Bauçà sent the manuscript of his last collection of poems (or whatever it was) just before he died at home alone and without receiving treatment for his illness. This last voluntary decision to end like this has some logic if we observe the tone of most of the writings he left to us in Immediate Certainties. He probably knew he wouldn’t have to respond to the wounds he was opening.

Seven different ways to shit (one of the poems in this book) is what activates my pictorial installation at L21 gallery in Palma de Mallorca. Bauçà was originally from Mallorca. To be honest, I am amused to take him back to the island without giving him the chance to respond me, the same way he did to all of us in his last poems.

The title of the poem is the trigger; the engine, but not the theme of the poem (I recommend reading this poem by the way). This title is a filter. In fact, a third voice, that is neither the poet nor the reader, is shocked and says: You are so rude!! And then we are told more extensively why he wants to scandalize us. This is precisely what this poem is about and this is what my work is about and I would even go so far as to say that for this reason Bombon has brought Diane Guyot and me together here and now.

Perhaps the pending revolution we have left is the riddance of the politically correct and a return to freedom of action and thought. So the thing is not about asses but about transgressing. And Seven Ways to Shit is not about eschatology but about breaking the tendons to predictability.

The placement of the paintings follows the pattern of the notes of the song The Hour of Farewell on an invisible music score on the wall. It is a combined tribute to a scene from the purgatory of the Garden of the Delights of El Bosco, where musicians perform a piece of music written on the ass of a figure lying on the floor, the same time the way Miquel Bauçà said goodbye.

Let’s talk about Diane.

She is always alert to the semantic failures of the messages around her. You can see this in her work installed at L21. One might think then that Diane exercises a “rotten look” at things, but in reality it is the things that are rotten that are captured by her and amplified in her work.

We live in something like the “stupid era” and I can’t think of a better palliative than using a little irony or twisted humor to be irreducible. Diane’s work can be as awkward as those people who in the midst of the general consensus disagree. But not just awkward… maybe it’s vital that someone discredits the phrase that says, “the majority never gets it wrong.”

Taking so much risk in interpreting my colleague’s work is part of the game. I hope you forgive me. Just as I asked to read Bauça’s short poem, I recommend that you ask the people in the gallery what Diane did in a hospital and what readings are hidden behind the totemic banner we hung inside the room.

-Pere Llobera, Palma de Mallorca 2020