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 Spanish Pavilion for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, there is one that shows the Pavilion courtyard completely empty, with two rows of chairs perfectly aligned in front of the stage. It is likely that some of the main actors in the Pavilion, such as Gaos, Sert, Lacasa, Renau, Aub and Alberto, were seated in those same chairs. The emptiness and the atmosphere in the image are disturbing and foreboding, as the empty chairs seem to herald the subsequent loneliness that many of them suffered in exile.

Weft and warp is a composition of twenty-four drawings that reproduce the chairs in the photograph in the same order and in the same number. Each of the drawings has been made using the technique of frottage on the seat of an original chair (1), symbolically emulating through the scratching of the pencil the violence suffered by the exiles on their bodies. This pain was expressed by Max Aub in a text that appears in Diarios (1939-1972) and from which the title of this work has been 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.

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