«De lugares y cousas. Colección de Arte Banco Sabadell» (Museo Centro Gaiás, Santiago de Compostela)
Museo Centro Gaiás. Cidade da Cultura
Santiago de Compostela
A place is a defined space capable of accommodating any kind of thing.
The nature of places, what characterises and distinguishes them from one another, depends precisely on what they accommodate, whether things, people or thoughts, and on the processes and the passage of time through which they have been constituted. Their designation, the name by which we know them, may derive from the shape of the land, physical appearance, monumental presence, animals and plants, men and women, gods or paths.
The origin of place names is often known, whereas the moment of a place’s foundation generally belongs to a more or less remote past from which only a vague memory remains. Thus, when we ask how long a place has borne a particular name, the most common answer is often “for as long as anyone can remember”. Place names resist change because they remain in people’s memory, linked to places and to feelings of identity and belonging.
The word “place” has other meanings that may help us understand the works included in this exhibition. We say “in place of” to indicate that one thing replaces another, or “to put oneself in someone else’s place” to imagine being that person or to understand them. Likewise, “to give rise to” or “to take place” refers to something happening and, consequently, something that “does not take place” never comes to occur.
The selection of works from the Banco Sabadell Art Collection presented here explores this relationship of construction, foundation, meaning and symbolisation between places and things: historical places and places of memory; geometry and space; boundaries and emptiness; bodies, words and space; habitable places, the city and the territory.
