The Canonical of Santa Maria de Vilabertran hosts "Parar taula" by Isabel Banal and Tura Sanglas

The Canonical of Santa Maria de Vilabertran (Alt Empordà) hosts on July 15 the inauguration of the exhibition Parar taula, which brings together works by Girona artists Isabel Banal i Xifré and Tura Sanglas, curated by Ingrid Guardiola. The exhibition is part of the eighth edition of the summer cycle “Dialogues. Art, music and heritage ”of the Department of Culture and Bòlit, Center for Contemporary Art. Girona

The dialogues began to explore the fertile relationship between contemporary art and cultural heritage, with the aim of turning Santa Maria de Vilabertran into a reference space for the dissemination of contemporary art in the counties of Girona. A dialogue that today is a common practice within the territory. Contemporary art centers and heritage spaces emerge from their own contexts to meet at a crossroads of views and discourses that necessarily enriches the two contexts.

Parar taula, a show that can be seen until September 25, collects the works of Girona artists Tura Sanglas and Isabel Banal in two spaces of the monastery. In the words of the curator: “Stopping the table is an old and common gesture. If it stops it is because of the promise to arrange and share food. During the pandemic, tables (desks - one of the best-selling furniture in those months -, kitchens or dining room) were very important places; also in our religious tradition (Talayotic tables, Christian altars ...). They are spaces of prayer and thought, of meeting and offering. To set the table is to thank, to celebrate, to dress the most rudimentary and basic, also to forge traditions, silences. The table in The Horse of Turin or the tables in Kaurismaki's films are bare, they underline the poverty - material, emotional - of the moment, something is missing. Stopping the table is that moment of pause that acts as a bridge between two actions, between two moments of the day, between absences and presences. It is to be deserving of the gain of another day, to have the basic tools that will ensure the survival of the body and the heart. To occupy the table is to be present, to count those who are still there and who matter. ”

Banal and Sanglas belong to two very different generations and contexts but with a shared sensitivity through different common elements. Says Ingrid Guardiola: “Artists predispose the ingredients, set the table, make variations on the same gestures, the perimeter becomes deep and the object becomes a world. Both of them, from an atavistic simplicity, remake the tables that have become thalamuses or places of action, maneuver with stones, with soap, with bread - of silver, of wheat -, transfigure the body - own and other people's. they trace traces —daily, biblical, traditional, historical—, work in small dimensions on enormous themes, poetize female symbols and give