The convergence of artistic disciplines to construct an exhibition narrative in which time, place and memory come together is perhaps the main leitmotiv of the project that José Miguel G. Cortés has specially conceived for the Centre d'Art la Panera in Lleida and MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo. The exhibition ‘ANYWHERE, NOWHERE', coproduced by both centres, is shown from January 30th on the galleries at MARCO's first floor.
The bonds the visual arts have established with the film industry and literature in recent decades have been numerous and varied. This can be seen in this exhibition, where artists, filmmakers and writers present their view of the journey, of the urban spaces, of the homogenisation of places, of the solitude of the human being and personal and affective exile. It is an exhibition project that builds a complex plot that is, however, precise and laden with suggestions, drifts and displacements to and from disciplines, which makes it possible to enjoy its many options for approaching certain reflections about modern society, the cities in which it lives, the protagonists that act in them and the effects a globalised world has on it all.
In both La Panera and the MARCO, the mounting of the pieces in the hall, with five different spaces that are connected together, is faithful to the argument put across by the curator. ‘ANYWHERE, NOWHERE' has been constructed as a literary essay with a prologue, three chapters and one epilogue, where art, literature and cinema come together in a visual and conceptual dialogue in which the viewer can actively participate.
The first hall, ‘Anywhere' (as a prologue, as an invitation to the journey) includes the books by the 1960s/70s artist Edward Ruscha, together with fragments of the film Paris-Texas by Wim Wenders, and the novel On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. Then, ‘Urban sceneries' brings together photographs by Sophie Calle and Alberto García-Alix, the novels The Trilogy of New York by Paul Auster and Heroes by Ray Loriga, and fragments of the film In the White City by Alain Tanner, as part of a polyhedral reading of what life in the city may mean today. ‘City landscapes' focuses on the repetition of the spaces, on the similarity of the experiences, through photographs by Bernd & Hilla Becher and Candida Höfer, fragments from the film Playtime by Jacques Tati, and the novels Species of Spaces by Georges Perec and The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. ‘Uncertain maps' looks at the lack of communication, the impossibility of sharing scenarios and experiences, with photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Francesco Jodice, fragments of the film Happy Together by Wong Kar-Wai, and the stories The Man of the Crowd by Edgar Allan Poe and Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs. Finally, under the title of ‘Nowhere', two works by Chantal Akerman (D'Est and Une voix dans le désert) and the novel The Ulysses Syndrome, by Santiago Gamboa, close the journey as an epilogue.