Weft and warp, 2016

Twenty-four drawings, 47.5 x 56 cm each.
Graphite on paper glued on stretcher.

Among the iconic photographs of the 1937 Spanish Pavilion built for the International Exhibition in Paris, one that stands out is one that shows the completely empty courtyard with two rows of chairs perfectly aligned in front of the stage. It is likely that some of the actors who helped to build it, such as José Gaos, Josep Lluís Sert, Luís Lacasa, Josep Renau, Max Aub and Alberto Sánchez, sat in those same chairs. The emptiness that can be seen in the image is disturbing and premonitory, as the chairs seem to herald the subsequent loneliness that many of them suffered in exile.

Warp and Weft is a composition of twenty-four drawings that reproduce the same order and the same number of chairs as in the photograph. Each of the drawings was made using the frottage technique on the seat of an original chair from that period (1), emulating with pencil lines the violence suffered by the exiles. This pain was expressed by Max Aub in a text that appears in Diarios (1939-1972) and from which the title of this work is taken:

“(…) What does man not tolerate, if he will endure? Everything holds. One gets used to everything. He forgets. That’s why, when life presents itself multiple in the night, like today, one becomes absorbed (…) And there is something of me where I went, and not only in memory. The enormity of each human life, all intertwined. All weft and warp. And that life launched into the heavens, being forever”.

(1) The model of the chair with arms dates from 1934 and was designed by the architect Josep Torres-Clavé, a member of GATPAC and partner of J.L. Sert.

________

Exhibition:
Presence and Absence
G6 Gallery. IVAM. Valencia. From 26 January to 7 May 2017.