Common Substrate. A New Archaeology Of Matter

Matter is what lies beneath change, what anticipates transformation and movement. Matter precedes form and representation, it articulates time and what comes after, making possible what is yet to come. The questioning of matter is common in many processes and debates about current art, often from a thematic viewpoint. However, it is also possible to approach materiality as a method. This exhibition brings together the work of the finalists of the Miquel Casablancas Award 2024 and the three projects developed during 2023 as part of the SAC-FiC residencies. Even though a variety of concerns are considered, methodological affinities can be found among them. Through sculpture, installations and audiovisual pieces, these artworks invite us to explore their construction processes and carry out an archaeology of the substrate they share.

Reflection on the concept of matter is something that has been going on since ancient times, particularly when a thought arose, that, in contrast to the metaphysics of ideas, proclaimed that all reality is based on what is material. Within the political struggles of modernity, historical materiality already emerged as a method for imagining the passage of time in a complex way, discrediting a linear view of history and opting for the conviction that matter is the cause of all transformation, in other words, the fundamental structure of all possibility. Today, focused on the search for other possibilities of life, speculation about a kind of “new materiality” has multiplied, which directly invokes artistic processes whose main focus is matter and its transformation.

​Artists: Marc Anglès, Isabel Bonafé, Natalia Domínguez, Mikel Escobales, Albert Gironès, Marina González Guerreiro, Gala Hernández López, Hodei Herreros Rodríguez, Abel Jaramillo, Claudia Rebeca Lorenzo, Lucas Marcos Barquilla, Jara Roset, Laia Ventayol García, Lola Zoido