Sidewalks, Fences and Walls

A couple of years ago in Ibiza, while I was talking with Luis Camnitzer, he told me the reason why he dropped out his Architecture studies in his university days: it all started with the vision of a sidewalk.

The architect who designed the campus of his university had laid out a cobbled path that zigzagged and crossed the lawn from side to side (function follows form) but, over time, a straight path was generated with the natural path of the students, making its way through the vegetation (form follows function). Architecture tends to keep this obsession with controlling everything, setting limits, opening paths, nailing fences, building walls.

Sidewalks, Fences and Walls aims to reflect on the idea of limit, which takes on special meaning in the context of an island such as Ibiza. Thus the natural limits that are beyond our control are contrasted with those other artificial limits that we build and with which we try to control and delimit our immediate surroundings. The title refers to one of the songs that was originally going to be part of Bob Dylan’s Down in the Groove album but which ended up being discarded because there were only space for ten tracks. Time is also a kind of limit, walls not only raise borders, they also establish routes that end up being translated into seconds, minutes and hours; sometimes days on the way. In this case, the exhibition space intends that, in a single view, in an instant, all the pieces can be observed, establishing the limits of the gallery at a glance.

This project will bring together four historical and reknowned artists: Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Luis Camnitzer and Lawrence Weiner. They have in common an interest in activating the surrounding architecture, causing a change in the way of understanding spaces and find new sidewalks through language, painting and conceptual installations.