The dark, the mystic, the animate but soulless

Javier Arbizu and Karlos Martínez B

The Blueproject Foundation presents "The dark, the mystic, the animate but soulless", the first exhibition by the resident artists of 2017, by Javier Arbizu and Karlos Martínez B, which can be seen at Sala Project from March 10 to April 30 2017.

"The dark, the mystic, the animate but soulless" is a project whose objective is to explore the potentialities of objects in their individualities and in their relationships. From a poetic perspective, the material world is understood as a field of possibilities, a place for wonder and mystery, opposed to mere reality.

The concept of "macla" present in the work of Oteiza, is revisited through a series of objects whose construction processes have been an exercise of negotiation between the characteristics and dynamics of the materials and the intuition and desires of the artists, always pondering a certain haptic condition. Oteiza’s maclas originate by the fusion of two or more bodies, that become inseparable due to the energy contained in the relation of its parts. There are similar phenomena in other fields of knowledge, such as astrology or biology, which have historically been considered magical or aberrant, not only because they are outside the norm but also because of the energetic load they imply.

Through this project, artists question whether the parts of the maclas have any entity as individual subjects, and so it’s the human perception that gives them unity, as in the case of eclipses. Or if on the contrary the maclas are necessarily due to their other half. In this context, objects are understood as actants, operating from their own physical, temporal and psychological dynamics. That is, vital bodies that are affected by external stimuli (among other, the artists), that alter their possibilities of interaction. The case study is, therefore, a whole apeiron, whose only possible access is the poetic way.