Artist: Martin Llavaneras
Exhibition title: Delta
Venue: Intersticio, Madrid, Spain
Date: June 10 – September 4, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Intersticio, Madrid
Intersticio is pleased to present Martin Llavanera’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, including a new body of work and a site specific intervention in the space.
The reflections of light on this puddled area are disposed as an arrow, as a triangle, as a D. The swallows cross from one side to the other of the fence, after they go down and graze the water with their feathery torso. They drink or they don’t, they refresh in between muddy waters. ‘And what a lovely itinerary, the solar radiation, traversing the universe, circulating through my stomach as atoms of the naná1.’
Days after I walk to the suburbs, I leave behind Amazon’s industrial unit, I turn, I cross, I continue and I arrive at an area of rubble and mud, I cross again and further down I find the wetland. A ‘mendicane2’ devastated the region and the airplanes are now landing off the clock. From here, I can see part of the landing tracks, the beach and the mouth of the river. The sand isn’t sand but neither mud, the water opens it’s way in between roads, marshes and rushes. The rhythm of the planes contrasts with the quietness of the area, the slow currents and the paused sedimentation. The time seems to dilate itself until being amorphous.
After some time, I continue walking to the interior of the delta. A few kilometers from the city, I access a viscous labyrinth. Enclosures and puddles form a capricious and chaotic grid, maybe due to the cyclone. A light and humid breeze blows through the fences.
At the bottom, a vessel makes the sand circulate while it capriciously poses on the banks. And it dredges, and dredges, and dredges. I go down the marsh between the ground and the ponds, between a solid and liquid plagued of bulbs and rhizomes. The fertility is chaotic and it contrasts with the order of the goods and the people that surround it, waiting to be carried, displaced and relocated in new positions. Here and there, the foliage is accumulated, between sweet water and saltpetre weird spaces appear. From the mud some yellow labels rise up, pulled by the water and piled up. As the wind, dispersing centuries of taxonomy and objectivity, we go from one place to another.
Around me, a territory as soft as a nest extends itself. This place remains in a decomposition that it is held impassively in front of my eyes. And I continue…From this observation, from the sensation of falling apart on an undefined floor, I have made a cocktail of sentences… ‘inconsistent material…not like that flow of stored goods in airport units, that before arriving at their destination, they go off.’ My crepuscular walks talk and they arrive to a point where the flow it’s opened; where things float and the flow expands until the meaning it’s diluted in the change of scale.
-Alba Garza
1. The term ‘pineapple’ was adopted because of its similarities with the cone of a conifer; the word ananá its originally guarani, from the term naná naná, that means ‘perfume of perfums’. ‘Ananas’ is a latinization of the previous term.
2. A Medicane (from the english ‘Mediterranean Hurricane’) is a meteorological phenomenon similar to a tropical cyclone that takes place with little frequency in the Mediterranean Sea.
Martin Llavaneras studied Fine Arts in Bilbao (University of the Vasque Country), Berlin (HTW) and Barcelona (MA in Artistic Production, UB). Some of his most relevant solo exhibitions are “CAU” (POLS, Valencia, ESP); “Turbaturbo” (La Capella, Barcelona); “Fruit Belt” (Espai 13 – Fundacion Joan Miro, Barcelona, ESP); “Humus Recalls Curvatures” (Centro de Arte La Panera, Lleida); “Reenginering Calcium” (Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona) y “Next” (Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria). He has been part of group shows in Centro del Carmen Cultura Contemporànea, Valencia; CAPC – Musee d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux; ADA Project, Roma; Yaby, Madrid; Meetfactory, Praga; House of Egorn, Berlin; Atelier 35, Bucarest; Saliva, Barcelona in between others. He has received awards and production grants like Premi Art Nou, Premios Injuve, Sala Art Jove, Beca per a la recerca i pensament de la Generalitat, Beca Guasch-Coranty; and he has been artist in residence at Ca2M, Centre d’Art i Natura en Farrera and the MUSAC.
