DAVID BESTUÉ. FLOR HISPANIA

Madrid is the geographical, political, economic and symbolic centre of Spain. Some people think that this quality links the city to the purity of certain values, of a tradition, while others believe that its position obligates it to serve as the country’s engine of change. These contrasting visions have a physical correlate among those who view Madrid as something stable and invariable and those who view it, in contrast, as a web of conflicting forces.

Sometimes these webs or force lines end up in a struggle for representation as a way of maintaining or breaking the framework of reality. By observing what has happened in Madrid in recent decades, several possible imaginaries can be sketched, all woven together in a five-chapter exhibition: the survival of the north/south axis as a symbolic figure of the capital; the formal production of official Madrid; practices that try to reveal hidden aspects in the territory; the notion of the unbearable; and works that literally show elements, materials or characteristics of the place.

The outcome is a selection of works, objects and images, as well as newly produced interventions. Much of the pieces in the show are part of the CA2M Museum collection, which are joined by loans from other public and private collections in Spain, as well as works lent by the artists chosen.

DAVID BESTUÉ

He was born in 1980 in Barcelona, where he lives and works. His most prominent exhibitions include Pajarazos [Colossal Birds] (Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, 2023), Ciutat de sorra [City of Sand] (Fabra i Coats, Barcelona, 2023), Aflorar [Blossoming] (Museo Jorge Oteiza, Pamplona, 2022) and Pastoral at La Panera (Lleida, 2021). His most recent exhibition as a curator is The Point of Sculpture at the Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona, 2021). His published books, many of them related to architecture, include El Escorial. Imperio y Estómago (Caniche, 2021) and Historia de la fuerza (Caniche, 2017).