We have an Outdoor Museum of Sculpture in Madrid, in the Paseo de la Castellana, under the bridge between the streets of Juan Bravo and Eduardo Dato. Being an outdoor museum, it invites the spectator to interact with the sculptures, making modern contemporary art more accessible to any passerby. Every time I visit the museum I see how time passing by transforms the works, rusts the metal, dirties the concrete, even now, in spring, some bud sprouted. To me, this makes them more beautiful. There are seventeen sculptures in total, although I’ll only tell you about my favorite ones.
Lugar de encuentros III, by Eduardo Chillida
For the Basque sculptor, his public sculptures are “meeting places, spaces for dialogue and coexistence.”
This sculpture was popularly called Sirena Varada, and after years of controversy it was finally exhibited in September 1978. It’s an sculpture of reinforced concrete hanged under the bridge by four thick steel wires and, though it weighs several tons, it looks weightless.
When Chillida talks about the search to express his concerns through his work, he says: “I don’t know the road, but I know the scent of the road.” The scent of Chillida’s road has to do with the dialogue between “full and empty”, and it also has to do with the hand as a concept, as a support, as a tool, as a scheme: “The hand has the richest articulation of space”, he claims. Chillida often makes drawings of his hands; he doesn’t know how to live without drawing, he says. And with his drawings he reflects about space and the material form, transforming later his reflections into sculptures. Chillida strips and removes, leaving only the essential. Between full and empty, he creates a balanced dialogue with the same weight as matter and the same weight as emptiness.
Proyecto para un monumento IV B, by Pablo Palazuelo
With this folded and cropped corten steel sculpture, Palazuelo makes the steel -which has a rusted color- look like a folded paper, weightless, light. The cuts and folds are done in such way that the sculpture looks endowed with movement; it looks like a sculpture made out of folded paper, an origami. Palazuelo’s compositions are always balanced, simple and harmonious. The artist tries to reflect on his creations “the dynamism of what’s apparently static.”
In his paintings and sculptures, Palazuelo, “the poet of geometry”, seems to repeat similar rhythms and proportions, composes music with the rhythm of his work, seems like he is solving mathematical formulas and bestows movement and lightness to his geometric traces.
In his geometric shapes, our artist gets his inspiration from nature, “…On the bark of those trees I saw a series of drawings that have been always transforming in different ways, from the top to the bottom of the trunk. They were precious and geometric shapes, making a series that I could understand… it’s like shells and snails, which are pure geometry…” The master inspires himself in nature, in the geometry that exists in nature.
Meré Ubu, by Joan Miró
The sculpture by Joan Miró reminds me, because of its shape, of a totem. It’s made of bronze and, nevertheless, it looks warm and soft. Does it have a soul? When he talks about his work, the painter, ceramist and sculptor, says: “What I am seeking… is a motionless movement, something equivalent to what is called the eloquence of silence.”
The mix of recognizable shapes, woman, bird, has a primitive language, pure, primary. The world of symbols created by Miró clearly has to do with poetry, intuition, and with the world of dreams: “I feel attracted by a magnetic force to an object, without any premeditation, then I feel attracted to another object that, linked to the first one, produces a poetic shock, having passed through that plastic, physical shot that makes poetry really moving and without which it wouldn’t be effective,” Miró wrote to Matisse in 1936.
Sculpting to Break the Boundaries of Painting
After visiting the Outdoor Museum of Sculpture and recreating ourselves in each one of the sixteen sculptures, we’ll talk about the favorite ones of the attendants of the workshop. This week the proposal will consist in building a sculpture with everyday objects that have a special meaning to us. We will join them until we build a sculpture that creates poetry with the mixture of its shapes. Each one will talk about why they’ve chosen those objects and about the world created by their combination.
I’m already imagining the crazy shapes, trips to our personal oniric world, among other possible adventures.
Photography: Oscar Rivilla
Conceptual Design: Carolina Verd
Fashion courtesy of Pez:
First and second picture:
Twin rings by To Be Continued
Dress by Forte Forte
Shoes by Paola&Arcano
Third picture:
Big petal necklace by Sansoure
Jumpsuit by Humanoid
Sandals by Visconti&DuRéau
Forth picture:
Bird necklace by To Be Continued
Mustard dress by Masscob
Sandals by Visconti&DuRéau
Carolina Verd 