Artists: Elena Aitzkoa, Roy Aurinko, Renata de Bonis, Bram Braam, Lucía C. Pino, Stephen Felton, Sebastian Helling, Kirsten Hutsch, Royal Jarmon, Daniel Jensen, Aneta Kajzer, Geran Knol, Alejandro Leonhardt, Mira Makai, Nat Meade, Anna Nero, Julia de Ruvo, Gabriele de Santis, Teresa Solar, Fabio Viscogliosi
Exhibition title: Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music
Venue: L21 Gallery, Mallorca, Spain
Date: July 8 – September 29, 2022
Photography: Juan David Cortés / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and L21 Gallery, Mallorca
This title suffers from an acute case of infodumping. It is a clear example of information overload. Too many details that leave little room for the readers and prevent them from staging, in their own way, what awaits them next. Although, undoubtedly, the combination of the sandwich with country music and the train conveys a wholesome, even pleasant dimension, it would have been perhaps the same thing to title this project: Eating a doner kebab on the subway while listening to classical music or even, Eating a smoked salmon bagel on the airplane while listening to punk music. It is not so much a matter of accumulating details, but of articulating proposals: relevant and meaningful variations to move forward.
The exhibition to which the title refers, is the fourth in a series of a cycle of five exhibitions that aim to celebrate the ten years of L21 Gallery. In this case, works by 20 artists, whose names are listed below, are presented:
Elena Aitzkoa
Roy Aurinko
Renata de Bonis
Bram Braam
Lucía C. Pino
Stephen Felton
Sebastian Helling
Kirsten Hutsch
Royal Jarmon
Daniel Jensen
Aneta Kajzer
Geran Knol
Alejandro Leonhardt
Mira Makai
Nat Meade
Anna Nero
Julia de Ruvo
Gabriele de Santis
Teresa Solar
Fabio Viscogliosi
This is the essential and most relevant information. Actually, it is a pity to have to set up only one show. With these artists and their works, we would love to present a new project every week! As a result of the works that have been arriving at L21 Lab in Palma de Mallorca, we have articulated an exhibition: its installation, illumination, paths, texts, communication, mediation, comments. We also hope (and above all) that the project will be joined by the enjoyment of the public through the experience of the visit, in order to continue this celebration that has been going on since last November.
“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That’s right.
Because we’re carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire”.
Cormac McCarthy’s writing in The Road is the opposite of infodumping. The American author devotes the minimum number of functional signs to describe the efforts of a father and son to survive after an unspecified Apocalypse in an inhospitable, depleted, exhausted world. Gray ash and a road to travel south. In his story there is no information, not a single word, that exceeds what is strictly necessary to the development of the text; as if he wanted to ‘go to the bone’, to show us only the essential. “I just keep going”.
Will the day come when we will finally be able to think with our knee? This joint allows us to walk, to be in motion, to go on despite everything. We function, perhaps in our best moments, like a knee. It is then that we activate a mechanism – complex, strange, imaginative – that allows us to articulate things, actions, thoughts. “Be that as it may, I think with my knee,” admitted Joseph Beuys.
“Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them”; it is a well-known human need to give meaning, even by means of elaborate processes of ritualization, even if there is nothing to signify. It is the need to feed the fire that, while it burns, builds. An ashen gray landscape, a road, walking, living. An infinitely repeated essay of which ‘all variations are valid, including this one’ as Esther Ferrer points out. Among them all, we yearn to find that paradoxical subversion that manages to transform the real into something more bearable, endurable.
McCarthy’s writing in this novel has been aptly compared to that of Samuel Beckett. Here we are interested in highlighting his extreme economy of words and repetition. The combination of a few elements develops the story that advances step by step and accompanies the protagonists in their journey; a limitation that brings the reading closer to a prayer, with an almost mystical rhythm, like a kind of ritual.
Some Beckett scholars speak of endlessly repeated reenactment. Elizabeth Drew and Mads Haahr consider that in Beckett’s Lessness, the author explores a non-linear reading process, using random permutations to order the sentences. The version he published in 1969 contains two possibilities out of 8.3 x 1081 possible versions for ordering the sixty sentences that make up the text. Then, the researchers have developed a computer program to generate the remaining possible permutations of the work.
In our continuous displacement and interrogation of the works of the 20 artists in the exhibition Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, we have moved on as if we were a knee because we want to take decisions like a knee. Thinking through continuous movement, like an articulation that allows us to bend, stretch, rotate, and pivot. The exhibition that now occupies the space of L21 LAB is just one among countless possibilities of routes, installations, distances, heights, texts and conversations. A deep and pleasant breath that artists give us because, despite everything, we are still on the road.
-Francesco Giaveri
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Eating a vegan sandwich on the train while listening to country music, 2022, exhibition view, L21 Gallery, Mallorca
Renata de Bonis, Mon Lung (handle with care), 2022, Oil on linen, 146 x 114 cm
Teresa Solar, Fround Control, 2017, Video, 4m
Lucia C Pino, Nº6, 2019, Iron, 115 x 45 x 52 cm
Anna Nero, Long Distance Call, 2022, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm
Daniel Jensen, Desert Island, 2022, Soft pastel, graphite and gesso on canvas, 140 x 100 cm
Stephen Felton, Moon Spray, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 127 x 127 cm
Stephen Felton, Opposites Attract, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 223.5 cm
Stephen Felton, Beginning, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 223.5 cm
Stephen Felton, Sacrificial, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 140 x 193.5 cm
Stephen Felton, Keep your guard up, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 140 x 193.5 cm
Kirsten Hutsch, Composition in Color no9, 2020, Gaffa tape made by the artist, Hockey tape, gel paste and UV varnish on linen, 150 x 110 cm
Kirsten Hutsch, Composition in Color no6, 2020, Gaffa tape made by the artist, Hockey tape, gel paste and UV varnish on linen, 150 x 110 cm
Alejandro Leonhardt, Líquida superficie sólida / Fotografía C, 2022, Injection of pigmented inks on Canson infinity Etching rag, 310gr paper. Aluminum frame, anti-reflective glass, 60 x 89.9 cm
Alejandro Leonhardt, Líquida superficie sólida / 8 cajas y una sorpresa, 2022, Gray high-density polyethylene boxes, glass fragments, Medidas Variables
Sebastian Helling, Singing Winds, 2022, Oil on linen, 220 x 185 cm
Sebastian Helling, Movement, 2022, Oil on linen, 220 x 185 cm
Julia de Ruvo, Kotton and Katie, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 100 cm
Julia de Ruvo, Nice kitties, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
Roy Aurinko, Chapel by Night, 2022, Oil and pastel on canvas, 100 x 73 cm
Roy Aurinko, Flood, 2022, Oil and pastel on canvas, 100 x 73 cm
Roy Aurinko, Easter, 2022, Oil and pastel on plywood, 100 x 73 cm
Renata de Bonis, Erva-daninha (Weed), 2021, Oil on linen, 30 x 24 cm
Bram Braam, Sunrise adventures, 18, 2022, Concrete, spray paint, posters, tiles, 42 x 28 x 3 cm
Bram Braam, And it sounds a litle bit like this, 2022, Steel, wire, stickers, 73 x 70 x 4 cm
Nat Meade, Untitled, 2019, Oil on hemp, 31 x 23 cm
Mira Makai, Night Guardian, 2022, Glazed ceramic, 45 x 40 x 40 cm
Gabriele De Santis, Tell the truth and then run, 2014-2022, 120 x 30 x 23 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 15, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 14, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 13, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 12, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 11, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 10, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 9, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 8, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 7, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 6, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 5, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 4, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 3, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
Geran Knol, Sitting Man 2, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm
