«De lugares y cosas. Colección de Arte Banco Sabadell» (Oviedo)
01.07.2021 - 19.09.2021
Sala de exposiciones Sabadell Herrero. Oviedo
A place is a specific space capable of accommodating anything.
The very nature of places – what characterises them and sets them apart from the rest – depends precisely on what they contain, be it things, people or thoughts, and on the processes and the time over which they have come into being. Their names – the names by which we know them – can be traced back to the shape of the land, its physical appearance, its monumental features, the animals and plants, the men and women, the gods or the paths.
The origin of a place’s name is usually known, whilst the moment of its foundation generally belongs to a more or less distant past of which only a vague memory remains. For this reason, when we ask how long a place has been known by a particular name, the most common answer we receive is usually ‘since time immemorial’. Place names resist change because they remain in people’s memories, linked to places and to a sense of identity and belonging.
The word ‘place’ has other meanings that may help us to understand the works in this exhibition. We say ‘instead of’ to indicate that something replaces something else, or ‘put oneself in someone’s shoes’ to imagine that we are that person or to understand them. ‘To give rise to’ or ‘to take place’ means to be the cause of something happening and, consequently, ‘not to take place’ means that an event does not occur
The selection of works from the Banco Sabadell Art Collection that we are presenting here relates to this interplay of construction, foundation, meaning and symbolisation between places and things: historical places and those of memory; geometry and space; the boundary and the void; bodies, words and space; habitable places, the city and the territory.
