Eva Fàbregas and the 'devouring lovers'

Desire, love, intimacy, cannibalism, parasitism, contamination, rampant growth. Thus begins the text of the catalog of the monumental installation Devouring lovers , by Eva Fàbregas (Barcelona, 1988), in the historic main hall of the Berlin museum.

The title, devouring lovers , evokes passionate intensity and tumultuous desire. Devouring love that refers to the tragic and complex relationships of Greek mythology such as Medea and Jason, Orpheus and Eurídice or Electra and Orestes; to "the dark and devouring love" of Baudelaire's romantic and Rimbaud's symbolist poems. It places us in front of timeless themes such as obsession, but also in front of the transformative power of love. But, in fact, Fàbregas does not deal with this kind of human-centric desire, but with what is transmitted through objects and with objects. And it is that, working with soft and malleable materials, he has created a gigantic libidinous creature that expands and tangles voluptuously, engulfing the metal structure of this old train station. An entity whose organs proliferate through space in a kind of sculptural metamorphosis of uncontrollable organic growth.

In this site-specific installation, as visitors navigate the sublime space, they encounter biomorphic and amorphous sculptures that seem to emerge from the floor, ceiling and iron structures. Tender and fleshy objects reminiscent of both body glands and natural entities, challenging the traditional notion of sculpture. Because, moreover, as we wander around the environment and the fictitious lovers melt into an eternal embrace, slight vibrations animate some of the sculptures, reinforcing this tentacular impression. The entire room becomes a breathing organism, blurring the boundaries between the human, the non-human and the technologically generated.

Fàbregas, in what is his most ambitious solo exhibition to date, aims to fully inhabit the world of the senses with touch as the primary source of knowledge, embracing physical intimacy and sensorial relationships to imagine other possible bodies, other ways of feeling , care and be in the world.