Los bienaventurados, 2022 - Xavier Arenós

Los bienaventurados, 2022xarenos2026-02-22T10:29:36+00:00

2. Los bienaventurados

3. Los bienaventurados

4. Los bienaventurados

0. Los bienaventurados

9. Los bienaventurados

12. Los bienaventurados

15. Los bienaventurados

10.Los bienaventurados

13. Los bienaventurados

16. Los bienaventurados

11.Los bienaventurados

14. Los bienaventurados

17. Los bienaventurados

Los bienaventurados, 2022

160 x 300 x 530 cm.
Wood, metal pins, photographs.

The work Los bienaventurados (The Blessed) consists of four forks and several planks which, due to their composition, can be interpreted as a Christian cross, a crossroads, or even a constructivist composition. Thirty-three photographs, mostly of artisans, have been placed on the edge of the planks, their silhouettes cut out and glued onto wood (1). Their faces have also been perforated to highlight their anonymity and to be able to look through them in order to contrast that world with our own, which is hyperproductive and hyperaccelerated.

In the introduction to María Zambrano’s book Los bienaventurados, from which the title is taken, it is stated that ‘blessed is the happy person, happy with what they are and with what there is’. This resilient and austere approach of the craftsman connects with an ‘original feeling’ that ‘comes from within’, which, according to the Spanish philosopher, is comparable to a mystical experience. And it is through this connection with the depths that ‘one can attain a radical, metaphysical and transcendent knowledge that can even lead to the revelation of the sacred’.

(1) Most of the photographs in this work have been taken from books published in the 1970s and 1980s with the aim of documenting the last manual trades before they disappeared completely. These visual testimonies by photographers such as Català Roca, Armengol and Natacha Seseña, among others, were complemented by texts by Artigas, Corredor-Matheos and Mª Antonia Pelauzy.

_______

Exhibition:
Anidar en el gesto: unas estanterías de Alberto.
Curatorship: Ángel Calvo Ulloa
Cerezales Foundation. Cerezales del Condado, León. From 18 December to 2 April 2023.