THE ARTISTS...

JUANJO GARCÍA MARTÍN (Málaga)

Asphalt Mars

.... Trapped in cities
in the near future
where all is unitary
And the individual moves
looking for poetry
on its asphalt plains
and in its opaque colors
of prefabricated peaks
to house everyone
in a set of unit cells

https://www.juanjosegarciamartin.com/bio

 KISENO  (Colòmbia)

“I recently saw on one of the marches in Chile a banner that said‘ we are not right or left, we are the bottom and we are going for you. ’Our political leaders have deceived us for many years by selling us smoke. , but for some years now I perceive that although the future is a vague image, what is clear is that more and more people unite in the face of an ideal, to be free and equal and although it is a path difficult and stony we are willing to fight to reach this ideal ".

https://artislands.com/christian-kiseno/

SILVIA SERRA ALBALADEJO (Barcelona)

"Resistance is the moment we are subjected to right now. Pandemics of health, violence, difference, ethics, humanism, irrationalism and a myriad of other" isms "are what make us resist this day to day, where the individuality is our imprint.
That is why with this exhibition we have tried to show, not only the acts committed but, those that we will continue to commit to turn our backs, to cover our ears and to silence our voices.
Fear, selfishness, pain and indifference are some attitudes that define human beings, and therefore their actions. The consequence may be a future as dark as the past has been."

https://artislands.com/silviaserra-entrevista/

ABOUT THE ARTISTS...

Marta Tamagit www.tamagit.com Related project: #artcanTbreathe


RESISTANCE "The biggest crimes in the world are not committed by people who break the rules, but by people who follow the rules." Bansky (or maybe someone pretending to be Bansky)

VIOLENCE, REPRESSION, at first glance, Kiseno's work is urban and popular; translated into other manifestations, it could be a street sculpture, a cement wall, an imitation leather jacket covered with metal studs. However, if we not only look at his pieces with the swipe of the index finger, but also approach to explore them, we see that this sculpture falls on us for having dared to express our opinion and crushes us like a dirty shoe crushes a cockroach. The wall prevents us from seeing that better world on the other side and separates us forever from our dreams and possibilities. The tacks fail to adorn or define us; Those metallic nails pierce our body and break our identity. We are simple skulls; do not sing or dance, because there is nothing to celebrate.

EMIGRATION, ASYLUM, at first glance, Sílvia Serra's jewels are expressive and experimental; It could be fragments of small boats on the Mediterranean, an assembly of crosses and other rubber and plastic elements between nylon nets, or a lithograph of thick text on rotten wood. However, if we not only look at their pieces with the stroke of the index finger, but we get closer to feeling them, we discover how those fishing boats are broken into pieces just as the scaffolding of large institutions and market alliances are broken day after day. The nylon nets take our breath away, slowly killing us under the sarcastic gaze of dozens of crosses. Wood rots and our bodies are in agony: we scream, but no one hears us. We sink and remain anonymous. Nobody looks for us, nobody finds us. They haven't even told us.

CRUELTY, INDEFENSION, at first glance, Juanjo García's work is bright and playful; It could be a stained glass window in a surreal church, a multi-colored kaleidoscope that has a life of its own, a fable, disconnected limbs and objects next to an oil lamp that sees everything. However, if we not only look at its pieces with the flick of the index finger, but also come to think about them, we observe that this church window encloses those who approach it in search of relief. The kaleidoscope does not stop rolling and makes us dizzy; we pass out, we fall to the ground, we become disoriented. The innocent fable does not teach through animals, but uses them and takes them out on them to earn money; or maybe fame. And finally that showy lamp that seems to be our salvation, fails us and ceases to give light and shelter. Darkness, isolation: we lose contact with reality.

THE GREAT SCREEN, if in front of the big screen that is our planet we not only look as fools and at the stroke of the index finger the indiscriminate and unpunished murders, violence, falsehood, lack of empathy, the attack against freedom of movement and expression, the indifference to the pain of the "other", the cruelty of money for money, the mistreatment of nature, the emptiness and loneliness of the individual and of certain groups, but we would get a little closer to all of this to explore it, feel it , think about it and relate it ... maybe we could stop normalizing Injustice.

DENUNCIATON JEWELLERY discovered the link between these three jeweler artists in their collective exhibition Indifference. Now, with Resistència, Kiseno, Sílvia and Juanjo once again join voices to give a voice to those who do not have it, taking another step in stimulating critical thinking and emotion through jewelry. What will be the next step? We look forward to more creative delight; of more matter for the intellect, the soul and the conscience.

Jesús-Àngel Prieto, La Floresta, ending August 2020.

JEWELRY AND RESISTANCE “The goldsmith of poverty neither polishes nor chisels. But his crown will have more majesty than the King's."

It was the year 1954, and Eugeni d'Ors was writing in La Vanguardia this eulogy addressed to a piece by a goldsmith, a jeweler. Capital praise when at that time jewelry was synonymous with precious stones, noble metals, social prestige and economic power. In Barcelona, ​​in particular, it was the moment of the so-called “black market jewels”, the jewels that those consorts of the Catalan bourgeoisie empowered in the shadow of Franco's regime wore at night at the Gran Teatro del Liceo. Many of these jewels were built with materials from the wardrobe inherited from Modernism and Noucentism: fashions rule, and that aesthetic (which told us about the identity of a country) was recycled with new meanings ... But no: this goldsmith was to the rivers, to the banks, to look for eroded wood, boulders, rusty metals.

D'Ors continues to speak: “… use the most humble materials for the most paradoxically sumptuous results. Thus, in our jewel, oxidized bronze replaces fine gold; the rough wood is in the place of the ivory. Nor are there precious stones; but the naked elementality of the pebbles. But if the metal turns green, the log grays in fine hues. And the changing of the matte stones in the light have nothing to envy to the reflections of emeralds and amethysts. "

This text mentioned the impact of this jewel present in the XI Salón de los Once (Madrid, 1954), a room that Eugeni d'Ors himself organized since 1942 to present the best artistic avant-garde of the moment (with a notable presence Catalan) and where different languages ​​coexisted: painting, sculpture, ceramics, goldsmithing. This is something difficult to see today, where in a liquid world we can have biennials or exhibitions with totally “free” languages ​​(performances, new electronic media, installations, ready-mades, etc.) but with difficulties in presenting painting and sculpture. . And let's not say for artistic trades: ceramics, jewelry, textile art ...
This is a new way of resisting against the institutions of the art world: jewelry as a language with autonomy to explain itself, to communicate beyond the role that had been granted, to be an actor in the social debate, to propose aesthetic experiences in the territory of the next, of the short distance, of the haptic.

How timely is this initiative that brings together Silvia Serra Albaladejo, Juanjo Gracia Martín and Kiseno, under that concept that evokes so much: Resistance. How not to react to the madness of our inertia in the face of the climate crisis, the terrible drama of the refugees, the effects of the pandemic, the depersonalization of our cities where politics becomes alien to its inhabitants, ignoring marginalization and inequality.
How not to react.
And that is the question that we cannot answer by ignoring the efforts of minorities that organize their response, their anger ... and sometimes, their proposals.
Grains of sand, voices that come together, from political action, from community networks, from art ...
Should we resist? Faced with a force, can we only propose resistance? Let us trust that from this resistance we will move on to proposals, we will move on to the awareness of our collective and personal strength.

Jewelry can do it, from its modesty, from its privacy: always a bodily dialogue between that object and me, between myself with that object and the others who look at me. We have all been challenged by pseudo-jewels (badges, pins, little ties) that other people wear on their lapels: challenged by reaction, rejection or empathy.
Jewelry can… from an exhibition space, from our body.
And we no longer discuss materials, formal stereotypes. Someone already in 1954 opened those doors for us. And, above all, the mind.
At a time when jewelery, goldsmithing, was linked to luxury, commission, and extolling the politically established, that goldsmith decided to speak of the priest Maximiliano Kolbe, who in the Auschwitz concentration camp offered to be executed in exchange for a father of a family who wanted to retaliate. That was the jewel present in the XI Hall of the Eleven, which Eugeni d'Ors praised: a Crown for a martyr made of copper, wood and pebbles. An author's proposal, in an act of resistance towards a story that, let's not forget the date or the country where it was presented, still left many and risky suspicions.
Sometimes sturdy jewelry just has to rely on that "naked elementality of pebbles."

Resistència 2020 Exhibition -José Luis Regojo (regeye.blogspot.com)

I have come this far from the hand of Marta, the director of Tamagit, a cultural project connected to the city of Barcelona that aims to give value to the work of contemporary jewelery artists who start from a legacy to which they contribute their vital experience.
We met in 2015 working as volunteers in favor of refugees who came to Barcelona. Three years later, he introduced me to the jeweler Silvia Serra so that I could learn about her work related to refugees. At that meeting, we talked about the poetry of her jewels that had a lot in common with the poems that the publishing house Autografía had just published in a collection of poems entitled Fronteras.
The very name of this exhibition, Resistència, already gives an idea of ​​the type of artists behind each of the collections. Pieces that are very metaphors for life. A life without anesthesia.

The jewels of the Colombian Kiseno, impregnated with a critical political and social stance, show an artist who does not hide behind the "I don't know" and who, from his office, denounces the excesses that he sees around him. The title of his latest work 'Without permission' is an example of his character. Jewels elaborated and thought from its trench that combine art and reflection on what happens in our environment. Kiseno projects a look at his city, any city, far from passivity and aware of its visual contradictions. Their jewels are to be read, they establish ideological, cultural, ecological and coexistence commitments. It is a work that goes beyond a city anchored in a territory, it is a city that adheres to the body as opposed to the city known to tourists.

Juanjo García, from Malaga, is an artist who denounces the climate abuse to which we subject our planet, as well as animal exploitation for the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry. His work "Asphalt Seas" explores the urban environment, the city and the worlds it houses: its buildings, streets, towers and inhabitants with their endless layers of colors and parallel stories. Designs, through which, the author moves looking for the poetry of the asphalt, of the agglomerations of people who build parallel stories, and the line with the volume that is always present, along with the signs of the passage of time in its grays facades, where at the end the individual moves on manufactured peaks, as a unitary being, driven through seas of asphalt.

Catalan Silvia Serra shows us her collection ‘Refugiats desemparats’. Some jewels born with the beginning of the war in Syria, and that put us in front of the mirror of the harsh reality of refugees trying to find a place in the world in which to live peacefully. Through her designs, she denounces the apathy of an important part of the population in the face of this world tragedy. Its exhibition allows us to visualize different types of jewels that are a cry, critical and ethical, of denunciation and resistance (hence the name of the exhibition) in the face of such insensitivity. A European indifference that is not innocent. Serra shows a collection of jewels that throw us into a reality that is also ours. A project without country or flag that is, without a doubt, a timeless and unfortunately global project.