In this space you can read about different research projects developed by sculpture students and their professors at the Fine Arts College in CES Felipe II in Aranjuez (Universidad Complutense's third campus).With these articles we hope to motivate other sculpture learning centres, to forward articles for publication regarding the teaching of Sculpture and projects undertaken.
Furthermore, we hope our new "Education section" will be a help for networking for those involved in education and we look forward to many bridges being built and hearing about them.
TALLANDO (sculpting)
Twelve hands and six parts
Exhibition of marble sculpture in Aranjuez
Review: from May 12th on and for a month, the visitor will have the chance to enjoy in the Plaza Rusiñol square, centrally situated in Aranjuez, an exhibition of travestine-marble pieces sculpted by arts professors in CES Felipe II (the third campus of the Universidad Complutense university). Mercedes Élices, vice-rector for this campus, was present at the opening ceremony, as well as the town councilors of Education, Lucía Mejía, and Culture, Paz Medina, and María del Pozo, member of the Fundación Paisaje foundation, which has developed the idea.
The truth is that art is nowadays understood through the discursive and relational reasons that lie underneath what can be visually seen, although it has probably always been this way. This kind of bringing together visitors and art goes far from the close preconception of the pieces as a final and proud work. It also asks the piece about the artist’s method of production, about the social and spatial environment surrounding this method or about the spectators’ influence. So, the piece is no longer interesting just because of its specific values, but also because of its textual meaning, in order words, as in the zenith of a speech. The speech is the own artist and his work as a whole, as well as the conditions of his production and the understanding of his communicative mechanism.
These thoughts help me identify the most specific and worthy of mention aspects of the exhibition Tallando, which is now taking place in the delicate public space in Aranjuez. Six arts professors in CES Felipe II have sculpted six pieces in travestine marble. The links that join the pieces regarding their public and plastic appearance, their methods of production and their shared objectives make the visitor forget about the idea of a collective exhibition to consider it as one piece sculpted, in this case, by twelve hands and in six parts. A piece, as a speech whose textuality is at the same time sculptural and complex, is not based in every pieces at all time: it goes from one shape to another, from one stone to another, and from these to the indivisible space that they share. The six pieces, which I will soon be technically describing, work as a unit, as chapters in a book, as short stories that are linked under the title Tallando. This characteristic can be seen at first sight in the exhibition and in the strong plastic coherence of the pieces.
I would like to mention, in first place, the university context in which this project has been developed. This exhibition, Tallando, belongs to a research that seeks to promote the stone sculpture among the arts students. It began thanks to the cooperation agreement between CES Felipe II and the Cristóbal Flores S.L. quarry from Almeria (Andalusia, Spain). We, professors and students, have sculpted the same material in the same workshop. Therefore, the pieces that the visitor can now enjoy in the Plaza Rusiñol square (Aranjuez) are artistic works, as well as educational commitments that have meant an immense feedback for the students. In the origin of this project, there was also the idea of establishing the synergy that should be shared by a university and the town where it is located. Unfortunately, this synergy is not always expressed as it should be expected. On this occasion, the town hall and the university have certainly cooperated in a very positive way to the town. They have both created a link between the university and the people thanks to the sculpture.
I would also like to mention the aspiration of the sculpture as a public good. It is difficult to think of these pieces in a different location other than the public space. There is no doubt that, since its contemporary inception, this piece has had a conversation with the Enlightenment spirit that is all over Aranjuez. With the Royal Palace’s view at the back, the six sculptures that can be seen in this exhibition create a totally different perspective of the classical and elegant forms that are so typical in the artistic heritage of Aranjuez. Probably thanks to the stone that makes today’s ideas come to live, this perspective is quiet. The town and the sculptures are complementary, without shrillness, as always when the stone sculpture is involved. It is the fair and unbreakable action I mentioned before; different pieces whose material link and scale are amazingly strong. That is the key of their adaptation to the environment surrounding them. The strange way they belong to their location justifies the public definition of their siting, which is not unnatural or overbearing. They are not objects fallen down from heaven, they make sense. This sense is rare in the public sculpture.
We, the six artists that have made this exhibition, share the same research objective, the same material and, even, the same cubic form [70x70x70 centimeters (27x27x27 inches)] as the recipient of our ideas. So we have made a convergent speech focused on the visitor about the stone and its process. But this does not mean we all agree on the same things. The plot of the short story that every sculpture contributes with belongs to the personal point of view of each artist. We have created a variety of modern feelings and each feeling takes its own path.
The path on concept. In Com-portar, Chus Hita modified the heavy severity of a stone cube. Now it seems as if it could levitate, as if it were very light and could be moved by the mere desire of anyone touching or seeing it. It is the same cube that disappears (all its material vanishes) inside Antonio Vigo’s red box. Apariencias modifies the meaning of its piece, or what we thought we knew about it, and makes it unstable.
The path on memory. Oracula gets back to our days the shared memory of water and its respectful stones. Aris Papagueorguiu becomes imbued with this memory and sculpts pantheistic stone again. Still the memory, the indifferent memory, with no special moments, shared with nature, natural itself; Ana Balboa merges stone and holm oak in La piedra que quería ser encina.
The paths on form and culture. How should a stone walk down Duchamp’s stairs? In La nube bajando la escalera, Marta Linaza makes the stone be the answer, the stone that has been transformed into a cloud, the stone that is finally naked and ethereal but still a mineral. Form and culture also appear in Le Cube (Hommage). It is a ironic and messed-up form of a unstable cube. I had to remember the strong horizontality in Giacometti’s face 13 to give it back come stability.
Javier Mañero Rodicio
Co-director of Tallando
Artist and arts professor in CES Felipe II