"Eladio Aguilera. To make poems, you don't drink water" to the Arranz Bravo Foundation

The Arranz Bravo Foundation opens the Eladio Aguilera exhibition on 12 May. To make poems, no se bebe agua, curated by Albert Mercadé and which can be visited until September 15, 2022.

Para hacer poemas, no se bebe agua is a project that reflects on one of the quintessential spaces of art: bars, cafes, taverns, bistros. From Vienna to Montmartre, from the Raval to Montjuic, in our collective imagination the history of these enclaves is linked to the artistic and cultural effervescence of a city. Bars are meeting and parliament places, where discourse is generated from the dialectical and emotional exchange between acquaintances and newcomers. There the communication flows thanks to the silent intervention of a liquid guest: alcohol. This is how the famous French vocalist Barbara sang it: Pour faire des poèmes, on boit pas de l'eau ('To make poems, we don't need water') -, in her song L'Absinthe (1972) which she dedicates to the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine and their relationship with the "green fairy." In our cultural narrative alcohol is related to artists almost more than to art, as it is to life.

The exhibition aims to be a catalog of images and objects about the alcoholic infrastructure of a bar. Glasses, chairs, tables, handles, bottles contain a special power that contains desire: the promise of happiness channeled through an object and the liberating experience we give it. Coexisting between objects, diverse people know each other and generate knowledge. In this sense, the bar is a sacred emotional and cultural gym space.

The installation incorporates a series of paintings that make the nod to artistic episodes that intersect alcohol, artistic production and the artist's personal experience. The personal stories of the artists are distilled in the form of an image, revealing the presence of creators such as Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger and Margherite Duras. Thus, while the German artist appears outside, half naked and vital, the French writer presents herself gathered in the solitude of the kitchen with flowers reminiscent of her Montparnasse tomb. The series was born from a stay of Eladio Aguilera in Paris at the end of 2020, in which the artist, deprived of social relations as a result of the pandemic, became interested in the biographies of different French creators transferred and buried. in the cemeteries of the capital.