Artist: Avelino Sala
Dates: January 30th till March 18th 2014

Avelino Sala
“Locked-in Syndrome”
by Blanca de la Torre

With this new body of work Avelino Sala explores practically every discipline: video, installation, photography, sculpture, and even a return to the drawing, a medium that actually the artist never entirely abandon. On this occasion the parts that make up the exhibition are perfectly basted, and not only serve to continue its efforts to reflect the viewer about the present time, but it contributes to that of the past, in the need for a permanent political review through a constant process of rewriting history.

As centerpiece, a traditional Spanish coat hanging from a rope, almost by way of puppet. In the back and the false distinction of embroidery in gold letters reads: Larvatus Prodeo. This quote from Descartes, -masked advance-, appears in Preambula, one of the letters of the philosopher of dualisms, convinced of the effectiveness of his rational The coat presentation it shows everything, insisting on the idea that everything is manipulated and his way to show puts us in relation to the explicit and the occult of the Cartesian philosophy.

And is that perhaps we have become accustomed to always be wearing mask, or that always they carried, that false diplomacy of the double behavior.

The “capa española” (spanish coat) tool and mask for crime – reason for their ban at one time by Esquilache, inevitability of history lessons chapter – was also protagonist of much of our literature, especially that of the glorious golden age and its shiny characters, fiction and the heading. The Spanish lcoat, sign and extent of the lineage, has accompanied the imagination of this country and has immortalized across all its cultural manifestations.

And so, hiding we move, with the help of that coat of glorious past. That past in the history of Spain that we were taught, or that summed up “cheating sheets” as in wristbands, interiors of boxes Alpino, Milan pastes, or, as in the case of clandestine installation, in the classic bic pens. BIC cristal. (who also writes fine). Thanks to a fairly controlled light, we perceive that room has registered in them, some thirty or forty, which seems to be the universal declaration of human rights. Rights that do not stop being one chapter of our past today. Another chapter of the story. A video accompanying it shows us the meticulous process, with that familiar sound of scratching plastic. And it is that Avelino Sala work not only scratch our personal memory, but that universal and collective, that file of records common to all Chronicle of revolt, attempt to change from the place of the resistance.
In the same line, with -archaeology of the revolt-, Sala plays ironically with classical showcase of file format for display in Museum registry key a series of stones collected in different manifestations of the world.
From here, following installation, -Sanpietrini-, decides to go from one of the stones of the place that gives title, and revert to false metal illustrious, to make a cast, this time in bronze. A series of drawings in graphite of the Roman road accompany paradigmatic cobble, the same type that was launched in may 68 and usual material in the barricades, but this collected in one of the manifestations of the Black Blocks occurred in the Italian capital. As in those cases in which the museum showcase houses archeological remains of common family, this has sought to stress magnifying one of the stones, – recourse to that fetish that we both like in contemporary art – to show how easy that is giving an object a greater symbolic importance and turn it into a reference work.

“Deactivation” consists of a series of photographs of burnings of flags from around the world. Digital images have been evenings hoping to show the absurdity of an act that has become common gesture of any demonstration that boasts, and understand as well as veiled as a symbolic act of changing a flag on the other. The corners of frames, curved, flat back for engaging in the Act of turning off.

Although here becomes more patent this need to revise history through all the papers presented, this is part of much of the work of the artist, and we have seen it recently with neon displays “Cui Prodest?” which joined recently the 12th biennial of architecture and urbanism of Madrid which took place in a Matadero. The reconstruction of our past or a past that is not so clear that one day out of our. Do again using the mother tongue – resource common to reiterate the need to know the past to understand the present-Cui Prodest?-who benefits? -Again put into question the Spanish layer, that which serves the masked men to conceal the guilty face.

Although things have come to such an extent that even the bozos are unnecessary. The Outlook is bleak, and with a new stroke of irony the artist sets up a kind of mandala in the wall from a series of hockey sticks, being registered laser titles of dystopian novels.

Sala works, regardless of its formal resolution, work always by way of images, not necessarily objectual records. And the so particular dialectic of the works presented here works as a concatenation of stills from our memory, a kind of deja vú in permanent hesitation whether it really was or was not, if this was true, or in any manner. Memories of a semi transparent appearance, moving in that territory between the murky and the moderately known. That keep us in a State of suspicion, in the prism of suspicion.

Once more Avelino Sala speaks of art as an act of resistance, as a catalyst for our ethical position as fastener vehicle of ideas and an attitude towards life. Through a project with certain nostalgic overtones talks can be manipulated and voluble symbolic systems, and thus own collective memory.

Sala reminds us how has been built that memory. do we have been us or our own memory has also been building through the same hegemonic tools we all know? have sometime those mechanisms of power have been in other hands than those of the powerful, those of the ruling class? It must wonder if, within all this territory so malleable, there have been ever any gap free of forgery, without a single iota of those processes from falsification that we have been accustomed, where we will always be that piece of memory that we thought doubt whether ours is nothing more than one product of the intrigues of those who carry the coat and bozo.

And Sala, go hiding, as Descartes and like so many other masked philosophers, such as art and so many and much-needed spaces of resistance. Larvatus Prodeo.

Avelino Sala

Avelino Sala (Gijón 1972) is artist, curator (Commission) and editor (Sublime magazine) writes in media as Artishock or A desk.

Lives and works in Barcelona.

His work as an artist has led him to question the cultural and social reality from a late romantic perspective, with a continuous explore the social imaginary and trying to put finger in the sore to check the power of art as experimentation spaces capable of recreating new worlds.

His work has been presented in various exhibitions, national and international, highlighting among the latest: (2013 S.O.S) Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca, (An Essay on culture 2013), NCCA, Moscow, (Distopia:right now) 2012 Museum marble of Carrara, (Funeral Pyre 2012) Matadero, Madrid, (Cacotopia 2011), First Screen, La Pedrera (AUTRUI 2011) Centre Dart Le Lait Grahulet, France, (Block House 2011)(, Galeria Raquel Ponce, ARTIUM (stop! 2010), Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, (Fatherland or Morte! 2010), Virgil de Voldere gallery, New York, (hostile 2009), National Museum of art Sofia (International Reencontres, 2009), Queen X Bienal de la Habana, (Comunicacionismos, 2009), A Foundation, London (Off the Street, 2009), Insert Coin, Spanish Young Art, October Contemporary, Hong Kong 2009) or Tina B Biennale Prague, (Small Revolutions 2008) or The Promised Land (Chelsea Art Museum, 2008). Generation 2003 by CajaMadrid award. Sponsored among others by Hangar and Bilbao art. In 2010 was a fellow of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and the centro de arte Le Lait of Albi in France.