Opening: Jul 7, 7pm
Exhibition days: Jul 8 to Jul 15. Mon to Fri 2pm to 8pm. Saturday 10am to 2pm.
Arriba, abajo, al centro y adentro is a group exhibition showing the projects
developed by artists Nadoe (South Korea), Alberto Alejandro Rodríguez (Cuba), Ana
Karen Rodríguez (Mexico) and Laura Such (United Kingdom) in the framework of
Nectar Artist-in-Residence Program. In collaboration with Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture and within the context of the
emerging art festival Art Nou Primera Visió, NectART residency program is based on a
call for project proposals – under the urban/rural theme – which allows resident artists to
deepen their artistic and creative process in a rural environment and connect their
practice with the Barcelona art scene.
This exhibition invites us to reflect on how art and culture can be used as an element to
question the relationship between the rural and the urban, where a reunion between
the city and the countryside may be the key to society’s transition towards a more
sustainable future.
In Arriba, abajo, al centro y adentro, the artists explore and question the
assumptions made about rural life and culture, bringing their personal vision through
their artistic practice based on the everyday experience of the rural-urban and natural-
industrial binary. The projects by the four artists are based on their cultural and creative
identities and personal motivations, which interconnect with each other and are
inspired by Nectar’s environment and their relationship with it.
Alberto Alejandro Rodríguez develops a practice that explores the relationship
between architecture and landscape through its history and memory and – paying
special attention to architectures that have been left aside in society and become
obsolete – works with the traces and materials found in these places creating poetic
and visual representations.
Laura Such explores sculptorically how we connect to ourselves, to each other and to
nature and culture while reflecting on the human conditions and limitations reflected in
the society we live in through playful, rhetorical and reflective language to address
personal and global issues with the use of contemporary and traditional materials that
create conflicts and oppositions – a sort of visual oxymoron.
Nadoe’s project raises questions about the value and function of the home in our times
from the emotional and in the urban-rural context. For Nadoe, the concept of home is
dynamic, abstract and subjective, and beyond its definition, the artist seeks, from the
unknown and foreign, the elements that provide the physical protection and emotional
rest that for her represents home; returning to its primitive and essential spirit.
The work of Ana Karen Rodriguez starts from the observation and interaction with the
environment that surrounds her, finding phenomena that go through it and through her,
phenomena that belong to a symbolic, global and industrialized economy and violence.
Combining form, materiality and color, the artist poses possible scenarios and
reinterpretations that build, intervene, fix and extend through her personal experience
and her intimate relationship with the place.
