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Martí Cormand: Un elefante en El Prado (An Elephant in the Prado)
Espacio Mínimo gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of New York-based artist Martí Cormand at the gallery. The exhibition, entitled Un elefante en El Prado (An Elephant in the Prado), is a project created expressly for the gallery and includes work which demonstrates, as Michael Wilson wrote in ArtForum in October 2016, The impulse to document and preserve grinds against not only the violence of history, but also the poverty of memory—personal, institutional, and societal—itself.
As Cormand explains: The title comes from an article by Peio H. Riaño published on December 10, 2017 in “El Español” where one of the most fascinating and unpublished scenes of the Civil War is explained: the shipment of almost a hundred showcases from the Museum of Natural Sciences to The Prado museum. Among other animals there was an elephant, the only one that did not have a crate. The Republic government decided that the Prado was the best place to protect the funds of other museums. The Ministry appointed the Prado as the ideal refuge, although its paintings had moved prior due to lack of security. A week before the bombing, the Museum emptied itself of thousands of paintings that were transported to Valencia, and then to Geneva, via Figueras. The transfer was orchestrated by Josep Renau.
The title ”An elephant in the Prado” suggests the English expression “an elephant in the room“ which refers to an obvious truth that is ignored or goes unnoticed. It also applies to an easily understoodproblem or risk that no one wants to discuss. Badly solved issues of the past return, and come to light in the present, to be inevitably discussed.
Cormand’s work attests to the coalescence of time, or rather, of an intangible past that can only be grasped in the present through intuition. According to the artist, our present reaffirms the concept of an “eternal return,” the idea that our existence is cyclical in nature instead of linear. These images also become a byproduct of entangled temporality in cyberspace, where Cormand often derives his source material.
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Espacio Mínimo gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of New York-based artist Martí Cormand at the gallery. The exhibition, entitled Un elefante en El Prado (An Elephant in the Prado), is a project created expressly for the gallery and includes work which demonstrates, as Michael Wilson wrote in ArtForum in October 2016, The impulse to document and preserve grinds against not only the violence of history, but also the poverty of memory—personal, institutional, and societal—itself.
As Cormand explains: The title comes from an article by Peio H. Riaño published on December 10, 2017 in “El Español” where one of the most fascinating and unpublished scenes of the Civil War is explained: the shipment of almost a hundred showcases from the Museum of Natural Sciences to The Prado museum. Among other animals there was an elephant, the only one that did not have a crate. The Republic government decided that the Prado was the best place to protect the funds of other museums. The Ministry appointed the Prado as the ideal refuge, although its paintings had moved prior due to lack of security. A week before the bombing, the Museum emptied itself of thousands of paintings that were transported to Valencia, and then to Geneva, via Figueras. The transfer was orchestrated by Josep Renau.
The title ”An elephant in the Prado” suggests the English expression “an elephant in the room“ which refers to an obvious truth that is ignored or goes unnoticed. It also applies to an easily understoodproblem or risk that no one wants to discuss. Badly solved issues of the past return, and come to light in the present, to be inevitably discussed.
Cormand’s work attests to the coalescence of time, or rather, of an intangible past that can only be grasped in the present through intuition. According to the artist, our present reaffirms the concept of an “eternal return,” the idea that our existence is cyclical in nature instead of linear. These images also become a byproduct of entangled temporality in cyberspace, where Cormand often derives his source material.
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