José María Sicilia unfolds ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ within the Liria Palace: “Isn’t it wonderful to avoid death if you invent a daily story?” | Culture | EUROtoday

If you had to decide on a single time period to outline the work of José María Sicilia (Madrid, 72 years previous), it might be analysis. Since his first creations within the 80s, his course of was paying homage to that of an obsessed scientist: he explored paint and its elements like somebody trying to find a secret method, an nearly magical reference to artwork. The identical ardour was later added to the procedures and processes by which it leads to the murals. In his case, every thing is linked and flows easily, leaping from drawing to writing, to music, to singing or to pictures.

Several a long time have handed since its first exhibitions and Sicilia has not stopped working, researching and experimenting in all artistic fields. Under the title of nights and daysthis Thursday a hanging exhibition opens to the general public (till May 31) through which the Madrid artist’s installations take over the Liria Palace, residence of the Casa de Alba, beginning with the well-known library after which climbing to the well-known rooms with partitions full of work and searching trophies. The customer will be capable to ponder the route just like the one opening a matryoshka and uncover successive linked narratives filled with historic, cultural references and the artist’s personal life. And as accompaniment, Sicilia has created an audio information with musical items composed by himself, though signed along with his second surname, Fernández-Shaw (he’s the grandnephew of Guillermo Fernández-Shaw, creator of the zarzuela librettos Doña Francisquita o Luisa Fernanda).

On the eve of the official presentation of the exhibition in Liria, José María Sicilia evaluations every of the items within the exhibition. Each of the installations designed for the palace are already completed, though he isn’t in favor of exhibiting fragments. He prefers to show the ultimate set as a result of every thing is “transformable and changing,” he explains whereas pulling the wire that holds his glasses to regulate his gaze and play with a brand new strategy.

The interview takes place on a morning of heavy rain and little gentle. While shifting spotlights and dodging curtains, he says that when the Alba Foundation proposed this mission, they solely gave him one situation: to not take away or transfer something from the crowded partitions, an advanced requirement for a palace that homes round 350 work, sculptures and numerous objects. “I was very clear that I had to play with the central part of each of the rooms, and for this there was nothing better than screens, the baroque artifact par excellence that allows ideas to circulate.”

With completely different sizes and extensions, every display is made with mirrors on which the good tales that Sicilia has been engaged on for many years are instructed. All these installations, united by the title The darkish background, They have in frequent that they have been created with screens lined with distorting mirrors and embellished with flowers that open within the darkness. Depending on the place you look from, the main focus shifts to reflections, transparencies, pictures, portray and sculpture. Sicilia says that his goal has been to hunt a three-way dialogue: the reminiscence of the Alba palace, that of the artist himself and that of the customer.

Memories of Carmen Giménez

Delving into his reminiscence, Sicilia affirms that the younger artist who skilled fame and success on the finish of the 80s, and who in 1989 acquired the National Prize for Plastic Arts, stays the keenness and want to be taught new issues, and to get entangled in every thing that catches his consideration. It retains one of the best reminiscences of the years through which Spain took the work of its younger artists world wide: Miquel Barceló, José Manuel Broto, Miguel Ángel Campano, Susana Solano, in addition to Sicilia, amongst others. “I will always appreciate the efforts of Carmen Giménez, the woman who exhibited us abroad and brought unknown and wonderful collections to Spain. She, the true creator of the Reina Sofía Museum, is responsible for the success of Spanish art abroad. We were able to exhibit in Paris, New York, Brussels… No one has returned to play the role she had then, and that is why new creators have very little visibility abroad.”

For an essential a part of his life, 4 a long time, Sicilia has lived in Paris, though he has at all times been intently linked to Madrid, the town the place he lives and works at his El Instante Foundation. She continues with the identical Parisian gallery as at all times, Chantal Crousel, and in Spain, Soledad Lorenzo dissolved, she has not too long ago exhibited at Prats Nogueras Blanchard. He does not like inaugurations and confesses that he dislikes festivals. Father of two kids, he speaks with true pleasure about all three kokishalf-finished robots, which he says assist him put collectively his works even when they do not at all times obey him.

While strolling by way of the ballroom of the Liria Palace, presided over by a big portrait of Eugenia de Montijo, he feedback that this constructing is just not, in actuality, a residence just like the Royal Palace could possibly be. It attracts consideration to the Louis XV furnishings that he needed to be mirrored within the mirrors of the display. And it additionally shocks him that on some partitions there’s wallpaper from the 60s.

But the essential factor concerning the set up within the ballroom is that the panels are overflowing with photos. Among silicone tangerines, lace drawings or bugs which might be tough to determine, you may see a black chasuble that was a part of the piece. Mass for the Dead Too Late, which he represented in November 2024 within the parish of Santa Creu, in Palma de Mallorca. More than 400 individuals then attended a ceremony celebrated by 5 monks and designed totally by Sicily. The piece additionally modified the sound of the bells, which, as an alternative of the standard ringing, expanded the howl of the tsunami warning sirens in Fukushima (Japan), one of many experiences which have most marked the lifetime of this artist.

The sounds of catastrophe

Sicilia traveled to Fukushima to attempt to perceive what had occurred. He recorded the sound of the tragedy that occurred in 2011 from human testimonies, with the voices of survivors who recorded movies and uploaded them to YouTube, and which have been taken in 19 completely different places in Tohoku. That’s the place the collection got here from. winter flowers and his determination to create the El Instante Foundation, the area the place he works along with his three daughters robots that, though they’re half completed, are very operational on the subject of collaborating on their works, “even if they contradict me,” explains the smiling artist.

The essential references in his life seem unexpectedly on the leaves of the screens. For instance, the discoveries of the American scientist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), whose theses revolutionized the speculation of evolution. And the well-known story of Scheherazade has a really distinguished presence. Arabian Nightsa narrative concerning the energy of storytelling. “Isn’t it wonderful to avoid death if you make up a daily story? I won’t stop doing it.”

At the top of the tour of the Liria palace, José María Sicilia confesses that he feels acknowledged within the artwork world. He doesn’t miss awards nor does he need anthological exhibitions as a result of, he justifies, “I would never delegate to a curator and it is an activity that would not leave me time to continue with my research.”