Juxtaposicions. Un joc de 576 pàgines, 12 figures, 9 colors
Installation views. Photos: Jordi Rullo.
Centre d’Art La Panera +info
The point of departure for this exhibition is Carlos Bunga’s artist book Juxtapositions.
Curator Ricard Iberian Pons writes:
“Juxtapositions is a highlight of Tinta Invisible's editorial output. A book bound in booklets that is itself a 576-page notebook of blank sheets measuring 51 × 35 × 11 cm and weighing 11.6 kg. All these sheets have die-cuts of 12 different geometries distributed in sets in the central areas of each page. Nine color dividers from his pictorial palette are also included, intentionally placed within the book's pages. The placement of these dividers generates volume spaces in new possibilities of infinite geometries. We're talking about spaces that change at the whim of the book's viewer, who can place the colors wherever they please, effectively realizing the creative play promoted by the author.
This book is housed in a wooden pencil case with a sliding glass lid that allows access to the notebook. The "back cover" of the case is a sunny yellow, a clear expression of the light of his palette. Inside this case, we find a shelf at the base of the book, which houses a half-hidden booklet with texts by Carlos Bunga; art historian Paulo Miyada; and the edition's curator, Manuel Guerrero.
The white paper book expands into itself; it has no covers and, with the binding, acquires firmness. The white pages project beyond the margins of the format, and only the geometry of absence defines a possible center. In this white space, the colors provide a more human perspective.
The play proposed by Carlos Bunga directly appeals to the viewer's vision in the creative process. The book's viewer can redefine the final result of the piece, a piece that becomes different and necessarily new through the simple exercise of exchanging and repositioning the colored dividers in the unfolding of the notebook's pages.
The book's viewer modifies the structure of the geometries and redefines the notebook's unrestricted meaning. In a radical scenario, we could, however, leave no dividers at all and thus obscure the total view of its depth. Carlos Bunga smiles and asks the reader to complete the final result. Similarly, the artist Joseph Beuys affirmed the role that every human being plays in the universal capacity for creation and transformation through art.
The observer's faculty of reflection and creation generates an unusual perspective, incorporating new layers of depth into the decision made. We have the capacity to participate and be accomplices in the creative experience.
Carlos Bunga creates a paradoxical situation by accepting everything that will happen. The artist opens the possibility of choosing the final position; This choice is fueled by uncertainty, hope, and hesitation before making the final decision that will shape the solution. There is no good situation or bad one; it is in the act of acting and doing that the meaning that elevates the work emerges.
In his artistic practice, Bunga incorporates the creative process as an essential part of the work, which is always expressed in an absolute present. Without a rigorous prior plan, the sculptor works directly in the space, allowing the action to flow freely. The artist, without fear or reservation, creates and undoes, constantly destroying and redefining the initial construction. What the author creates emerges from a vital purpose: to generate a new space that is reborn in a new time each time.
From this book and the remnant of die-cut stains, the author "recycled" a set of loose pages that he used as a paper canvas for drawing. The result is a series of fantastic drawings that hover over the editing work. Carlos Bunga juxtaposed colored cardboard from his palette, creating collages of regenerated shapes and geometries. These are precise drawings, in which the cut of the form shadows the color, and the color emerges, sudden and vivid, like a wound that reveals the light hidden beneath the surface.
Thus, each piece becomes a manifest geometry that cordons off emptiness and fullness, a celebration of form that transforms fragments into universes, in which shapes are effective constructions of an ancient language, speaking of beauty and of the world that always resonates with life.
In 2022, at the Arco fair in Madrid, these drawings were exhibited at the stand of the Vera Cortês Gallery in Lisbon. They were displayed on the main wall, where they formed an impeccable regular grid. The overall view made a strong impact on visitors, and the art critics' association awarded him the prize for the most relevant contemporary artist of the edition.
In this exhibition at La Panera, Bunga has continued to create the series of drawings in the same way. These geometries move on the frontal plane, exalting the pure geometric space and making any trace of previous color disappear. A drawing of light appears, just as we might have initially imagined it in a vaporous dream, at that moment just before awakening. In these drawings, any appeal to emotion disappears, leaving the space clean and transparent to free will.”
WORKS
Photos: Jordi Rullo.
Curated by: Ricard Iberian Pons. With: Anne Roigé
2025. Lleida, Spain.
