Benveniste Contemporary | A primeros de mayo | Madrid
February 12 – May 12, 2022
A primeros de mayo (Early May)
Benveniste Contemporary
In-Person Viewing:
Calle Nicolás Morales, 37, 28019 Madrid ES
Inauguration: February 12 from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
Starting at 1:00 p.m.: talk and demonstration of the process between the artists, the workshop technicians and the editor.
‘The process when designing a chair is more or less the same as that of clothing, provoking a sensation in the workshop that all these cut-outs (patterns), accumulated and reviewed with pencil, could easily be reassembled over and over again on different types of wood, composing other templates such as rocking chairs, small tables, shelves or even a city model. Each piece finishes in different ways and with different curvatures in the upper part of the backrest, forming moderately sensual structures upon which we rest and in which collections of fine lines and narrow gaps are articulated. There they are, hand made, covered with sawdust, plunged. Many of them made from magazine or publicity papers, revealing broken phrases and marks that guide the carving on the wood.
In this series we talk about what happens before sculpture. A volume, produced via the very trade itself when performing it, where tools and materials come together, seized and settled just like the way a straw hat rests on our heads.’
Julia Fuentesal and Pablo M. Arenillas studied at the University of Fine Arts in Seville. They have lived and worked in London, Berlin and Madrid, where they currently reside. Their work explores the mischievous dimensions of artistic practice, with pieces that intersect autobiographical aspects with formal resources such as the double figure and repetition. In their work processes, wood has a privileged place, turning toward the trade as a reference. They have proposed everything between games with small pieces, to large panels, recovered beams, warm floors, sculptures or spaces, testing and finding stimulated forms for the gaze and the body likewise.
In 2021, Fuentesal Arenillas inaugurated the exhibition Cubierta brilliante/Margen delgado [shiny surface/thin margin], curated by Juan Canela en the Sala de Arte Joven, under the programme of artistic production at the Comunidad de Madrid-DKV in Madrid (ES). Their work can be found in the Colección Comunidad de Madrid CA2M (ES), the Pietro Molina_s Collectio_n (IT), the Fundación Banco Sabadell (ES), El Blueproject Foundation (ES), the Colección SCAN (UK), the Colección CuldeSac (ES), the Colección DKV Madrid (ES), the Fundación Universidad Complutense (c a c) (ES), the Fundación Universidad Santa Isabel de Hungría (ES), the Fundación Universidad de Huelva (ES), the Fundación Newcastle (ES), the Ayuntamiento Genalguacil (ES) and the Fundación Valdearte (ES) amongst others.
