«In waste products [children] they recognize the face that the world of things turns directly and solely to them. In using these things, they do not so much imitate the works of adults as bring together, in the artefact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds in a new, intuitive relationship. »

— Walter Benjamin

 

The body—sculptural, biological, or conceptual—does not exist to remain still. As a body, it must relate to other bodies. Similarly, the image—understood both as a visible body and as a product of imagination and theoretical exercise—always operates in a performative and relational manner. Think, for instance, of religious imagery and the performative use of what we call “images,” referring here to the Catholic tradition of carving or painting sacred figures. These are images made to be put into circulation, meant to make us move around them. This brings up a first question: what happens when an image insists on moving? This inquiry, sparked in dialogue with the context surrounding this gallery—the exhibition opens during the Cruces de Mayo in Seville— activates both the works of the invited artists and our own position—perhaps closer to that of performers within a theatrical space than mere spectators.

The exhibition explores the inherent tension between the sculptural as a stable form and its drift toward action, transit, and performativity. What is proposed here is not a taxonomic classification, but a revisiting of the classic dilemma between stillness and motion: a composition of bodies in space through a series of notes—understood as open-ended gestures toward sensory, perceptual, or even musical dialogue. To do so, the exhibition gathers a diverse group of artists whose practices, far from pursuing formal or thematic unity, share a sensitivity toward the porous, the transitory, and the displaced. These are artistic practices that emphasize the centrality of the body in all its possible meanings; that understand materials as active forms of thought; that systematically question traditional categories such as object, installation, action, or document; and that reveal how the sculptural and the somatic can hold movement even in their apparent stillness. Rather than reaffirming sculpture as a closed volume or monumental presence, the works presented here unfold as unstable forms: mobile presences, fleeting traces, masks, fabrics, choreographies of objects and words that activate the gallery space. There is no central core here, no evolutionary sequence, but a constellation of practices driven by the desire to think about the image through its ability to transform, to be affected, and to affect us in turn.

The project is structured around three conceptual axes—not as isolated compartments, but as intertwined and complementary reading perspectives—through which the works can be approached from multiple angles: Transits, popular imagery; Gleaners, galleries; and Itinerant theatres, transits. As a performative gesture of closure—or rather, as an epilogue—the gallery’s courtyard has been activated. This gesture serves as a symbolic retribution for the offering of the space—understood from the outset not as a closed gallery, but as a construction site in progress, where collective imagination can give rise to new ways of inhabiting the city through the commons. Finally, throughout the exhibition period, a series of activations will take place, expanding the scope of the show and deepening the themes it explores.

 

Enrique Fuenteblanca

 

Pedro G. Romero, Mercedes Pimiento, Alegría y Piñero

 The first axis, Transits, popular imagery, introduces a sculptural perspective through the ritual or political circulation of images. The image ceases to be a static object and becomes something that moves, that travels, that is touched and activates the bodies around it. The works delve into symbolic forms tied to the popular, the sacred, the festive, and the political—images that range from processional to carnivalesque to machinic in their various senses—and underline the idea that imagining is not only about producing forms, but also about putting them in motion, and letting them move us.

 

Pepa Rubio, Cristina Mejías, Julia Valencia

The second axis, Galleries, gleaners, proposes a series of works related to assembly, collection, and utilitarian function. The act of gleaning—gathering what others have left behind, as explored cinematically by Agnès Varda—emerges here as both artistic and political strategy. The works presented take shape as open-ended assemblages, resistant to formal closure, combining everything from natural materials to industrial remnants, from minimal gestures to ephemeral architectures. Within this framework, the gallery is transformed: it ceases to be a neutral container and becomes a space traversed by material memories, residual affects, and forces of reappropriation—echoing its former identity as a street market or urban passageway, where constant negotiation takes place between the singular and the collective, between art and everyday life.

 

Miguel Benlloch, Anita de la Cuadra, Nacho Criado

The third axis, Itinerant theatres, transits, concludes this cycle by addressing the body from its theatrical, grotesque, and unstable dimensions—as another mode of wandering. Revisiting an old etymological misunderstanding—the conflation of “scene” and “obscene,” already noted by Varro—the works reveal a hidden link between the obscene and what appears on stage: the comic as that which is excluded from the visible everyday and yet harbors a deep philosophical charge. Here, masks and costumes do not function as means of concealment, but as devices of inverted revelation. Bodies are presented simultaneously as inscriptive surfaces and contested territories. Sculpture is infected by the performative and the theatrical, destabilizing the political order of the polis and opening space for imagination, illusion, and carnivalesque celebration.

 

Elena Coca

The epilogue, Construction Site, offers an open-ended reflection on the multiple meanings of the term “work,” close to Umberto Eco’s notion of the “open work.” The exhibition invites us to reconsider the ontological boundaries of art and how we interact with it. The polysemy of the German Werk or the English work (both artwork and labor) reveals a tension between image, technique, and poetics, suggesting the gallery itself as a site “under construction”—a place in permanent becoming.

This idea closely dialogues with Heideggerian cosmotechnics and with Walter Benjamin’s fragment “Construction Site”, where he describes how children forge new poetic relations between discarded materials by stripping them of their original functions. This creative montage around detritus forms a central metaphor for the artistic processes showcased in this exhibition: open-ended, processual, and deeply situated.

The gallery thus stops being a mere container and becomes an open site — a space for collective imagination, continuous transformation, and everything still unnamed.

 

 

 

Acknowledgments: Archivo Miguel Benlloch, Chema Blanco, Isabel Bonilla, Legado Nacho Criado, Formato Cómodo, Miguel Benlloch’s family, Ana Gandía Casasnovas, Garde Films, Isaías Griñolo, Cristina Hergueta, Manuel López Serrato, Leila Mohamed, Antonio Molina Flores, Jaime Quintero, Juan F. Rivero, Felisa Romero, The RYDER Projects, pie.fmc, Wu Tsang, Transportes Moyano, Joaquín Vázquez, Mar Villaespesa, Daniel Villar-Onrubia

With special recognition to BNV Producciones

Featuring works by Miguel Benlloch, Elena Coca Porras, Nacho Criado, Anita de la Cuadra, Cristina Mejías, Alegría y Piñero, Mercedes Pimiento, Pedro G. Romero, Pepa Rubio, Julia Valencia