Delve
An exhibition of photos, drawings, moving image artworks and paintings, exploring the relationship of space and the fantastic, at Josep Renau Gallery, Faculty of Fine Art San Carlos, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, September - October 2024
Exhibition concept/curation: Lucía I. King
Artists: Pak-Keung Wan, Helena Goldwater, Mochu, Mia Taylor, Javier Olivera & Lucía I. King
Curatorial partners: Miriam Del Saz Barragán, Laura Silvestre García & Miguel Angel Herrero Cortell
- Faculty of Fine Art San Carlos, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Spain, and University of Brighton, UK.
Guest participant: Patricia García García, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid.
Exhibition Catalogue
Gallery view: Brackets 2 Lucía I King, Macular Solar 1-6 Pak-Keung Wan, & Uriel Helena Goldwater Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Gallery view: Un Momento Despues & Un Momento Aquí Javier Olivera, Apparitions 1-5 Pak-Keung Wan, & Brackets 2 Lucía I King
Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Gallery view: Cloak & Primal Scenes series Pak-Keung Wan, Articulated & Succour Lucía I King Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Gallery view: Primal Scenes series Pak-Keung Wan Photo: Javier Olivera
Gallery view: Cloak Pak-Keung Wan, Untitled (watercolours from Plot Structures) Mia Taylor, Articulated Lucía I King Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Gallery view: Brood, Conversation piece & Top-knot Helena Goldwater, Apparitions 1-5 Pak-Keung Wan, & Brackets 1 & Breathing Space Lucía I King
Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Gallery view: Still from Cool Memories of Remote Gods Mochu Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Gallery view: Still from Plot Structures Mia Taylor, Photo: Darío Rodriguez Ochoa
Space - the way we articulate it, is a method of organising the world, constructing it as the ‘real’. Space is not a container in which we dwell; space is made for and by humans. It also becomes political when space and place are a question of allocation. From a relationship between continents that, in the last century that was structured by history, the 21st century transports us into a ‘depthless horizontality of immediate connections’ (Doreen Massey, 2005 p.81): the prevalence of AI, 24-hour finance systems, instantaneity, the proliferation of social media networks, the collapse of spatial barriers leads to the annihilation of space by time. From an imagining of a ‘global’ space comes the immediacy of a single present, a present that spans continents, and carries assumptions of an easy and seamless multi-culturalism. Yet at the same time, in debates on immigration, we are stuck in an archaic system of securitised boundaries and national protectionism. (Massey ibid)
To be able to question our relationship with ‘local’ and ‘global’, to prioritise a politics of trans-local artistic friendships, the 'Delve' artists’ group excavated what is impossible to experience about the present by activating the fantastic. This does not entail providing a framework in which ‘the fantastic’ will appear. Instead, the show positions the artworks themselves in which the spaces they create become alternate realities of the fantastic.
A research events program coinciding with the exhibition included 5 artists’ talks and an interdisciplinary dialogue, open to the public, between literary theorist, Patricia García García and artist/curator, Lucía I. King.