04.O2.2023 > 15.04.2023

OTRO LUGAR

“Otro lugar” opens up a new avenue of investigation in the work of Alegría y Piñero. The voice, the fundamental theme of their artistic project, is now blurred by a specific effect that deforms the intelligibility of speech to the point of losing all possible understanding: reverberation. This new condition leads them to speculate on the vibration of a voice that expresses without language.

The permanence of a sound, even when it has ceased to be emitted, depends on its reflection on the different surfaces of the space in which it occurs. Alegría and Piñero use the spiral of a spring as a resource to simulate this reverberation effect. They create ceramic drums whose heads, tuned to vibrate at a frequency close to the voice, are connected by means of a long spring. These drums articulate several of the works in the exhibition: “Carro”, interprets the friction of its spring against the pavement under a new sound code, which transits the margins of the voice. In “Oí” and “Resonadores de voz”, the drums sound without friction, they are activated by sympathy; they recognise themselves in our vibrations, they appropriate our voices and place them in that new place, deep and reverberant, that the work suggests. “Resonant Body” and “Screen” model and resize the sound through the spring. Both have an autonomous activation mechanism: a sharp blow is the detonator of the sound that these sculptures keep alive, postponing its fading, delaying its death until it strikes again.

A personal experience without transcendence, which nevertheless leaves a deep impression on the artists, is the beginning of this search:

“Years ago, visiting a house for rent, we experienced an acoustic illusion. We entered a tiny room with barely room for a small bed and a narrow metal shelf. The host continued to speak as he had done throughout the tour, however, as we entered here his voice changed completely. A strong reverberation enveloped us, our words echoing as if we were in the centre of a huge cathedral. Surprised, we began to make different sounds, to clap our hands…we searched for the cause of this strange sensation of discordance between the space we were in and the spatial sensation that the sound of our voices returned to us. We discovered that the effect originated from the thin shelves of the bookshelf.

Recreating that experience and developing reverberation in sculptural objects that generates its own spatiality through sonority is the backbone of this exhibition. These new sculptures appeal to an affection of the body itself, to a communication by resonance, where sound is modelled, poured and reflected. The dock, present in all the pieces, generates a specific atmosphere that suggests perception and calls for new sensitive strategies that allow us to relocate ourselves in this new place to which the sculpture leads us.