'Rag and bone' by Quico Estivill at the La Mercè Cultural Centre

From October 14 to November 3, you can visit the latest work by the artist Quico Estivill Rang and Bone in the exhibition hall of the La Mercè Cultural Center in Girona.

This exhibition, which has been coordinated by Manel Bayo and curated by Eudald Camps, presents a journey that questions the most transcendent symbols of society (flags) and the old dreams of human permanence (skulls, funerary masks) from a transversal poetics, that is to say, one that can go from the most traditional painting to the video installation without giving up, in any case, its conceptual essence.

The English expression "rag-and-bone" literally means "rag and bone". From the 19th century onwards, however, and with the arrival of modernity and its "surpluses" (both physical and human), "a ragand-bone man" began to designate what we would call a parracaire: someone who travels the streets of the city with the aim of picking up the remains (among them old fabrics and the bones that gave them shape) and, by extension, any remains that could have a second chance.

In this sense, the artist is a bit of a "rag-and-bone man", not so much because of his "parracaire" activity as because of his hobby of spying on lives: everything he collects, in the end, he makes a frieze or a very disturbing mosaic which, in Estivill's case, can always be read as a Vanitas. Visiting hours are from Monday to Friday from 9:30 to 13:30 and from 16:30 to 20:30 in the evening.