New Paintings for the Walls of Gil-Albert

The Juan Gil-Albert Alicante Institute of Culture will renew the paintings on its walls until 2026. This will be done to showcase the six projects selected in the seventh edition of the 'Art in the Casa Bardin' programme.

This initiative encourages the joint participation of Alicante authors and curators, as noted by the Deputy of Culture, Juan de Dios Navarro, with the aim of integrating their projects into the exhibition programme at the Gil-Albert headquarters.

"It is an opportunity for our creators that, in addition, this year extends the exhibition period and increases the financial allocation for those selected," Navarro recalled.

Thus, three of the exhibitions will be displayed this year and the rest for the next term. In terms of financial allocation, the remuneration has been increased from 1,800 euros to 2,000 euros for the artist, and from 1,000 to 1,200 for the curator.

The programme includes parallel activities such as guided tours and a meeting between curator and artist to analyse the creation of the project. Additionally, the competition includes the publication of the exhibition catalogue, in line with the editorial series 'Art in the Casa Bardín'.

Massimo Pisani and Luisa Pastor are the artist-curator tandem leading the list of proposals chosen by the jury. Their project, 'Sentences and Madrigals', invites the viewer to explore a series of sentences, understood as judicial resolutions issued by a judge, and a series of madrigals, understood as lyrical poems of three to six voices, aiming to create tension between the most rational bureaucracy and a more pulsional polyphony. This is achieved through 25 paper works alongside a series of pieces with speakers.

'The Children of the Deer' is the title of the work by photographer Jose Luis Carrillo and curator Antonio Cervera, presented for the first time in Alicante. A proposal specifically designed for the IAC that dialogues the final images with the first ones that have never been exhibited.

The next work is by artists Susana Guerrero and Eduardo Infante, curated by Jaime Pérez Zaragozí, who will present 'Mystery and Necessity'. Guerrero Infante emerged from the union of both creators, who collaboratively create each piece: drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations. The project began two years ago at the Casa Bancal gallery of Pérez Zaragozí in Altea and continues to develop. 'Mystery and Necessity' is the title of the exhibition of the project 'The Sphinx', adapted to the Casa Bardín space.

The artist leaves the city and ventures into the natural landscape of Alicante and northern Murcia to present a series of three-dimensional, medium-format works: artistic collages created with photographs of these geological formations. This is how their proposal, 'Natural Surface', is defined by Isidro Blasco, artist, and Isabel Tejeda, curator.

In 'The Line of Life', artist Silvia Lerín uses the line, in its duality as a structuring and chance-generating element, as a central theme of reflection. Throughout the exhibition, curated by Ana Pastor, visitors can see two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces where Lerín's characteristic use of colour and texture stands out, creating subtle and complex atmospheres with different shades.

Finally, 'Utopian Monuments', the exhibition by Elio Rodríguez, with Rafael Serrano as curator, invites the viewer to explore the relationship between the monumental and the organic, the real and the utopian, through a playful and critical dialogue with iconic monuments. It consists of a series of artistic interventions, in different formats, that challenge the rigidity of space and architecture.