The order of the days

29/11/2018 - 26/01/2019

Concha Martínez Barreto

El orden de los días' is an exhibition of the most recent work by Spanish artist Concha Martínez Barreto (Murcia, 1978). A multidisciplinary exhibition in which, through different media and techniques, the artist will take us through memory, that fragile but intense place where we store our lives and those of others.

The order of the days’ is an exhibition of the most recent work by the Spanish artist Concha Martínez Barreto (Murcia, 1978). A multidisciplinary show where, by different mediums and techniques, the artist will take us through the memory, that fragile but intense place where we collect our life and everybody else’s.

Memory allows us to collect but also to recover moments, which without being completely loyal to what really happened, they shape and define us as time goes by. The artist reflects on the fragility of recalling, how hard it is to preserve a memory and consequently how easy it is to distort it. Artworks such as the series S/T illustrate with technical mastery this idea by means of borrowed memories.

Another of the recurrent topics in Martínez Barreto’s work is that all-powerful time. Time decays everything, it destroys everything, but at the same time it creates it all. Human beings frequently have the necessity to leave their trail in their pass-through life, a necessity mainly frustrated by the oblivion from those who could remember us, the ones that surround us. The artist studies the pass-through life and how oblivion marks the end in that unsuccessful attempt to persist.

Each artwork hides a story that it transcends by its character and technical quality. The artist tells us how each piece arises, what concept is hidden behind each chosen format in order to let the spectator judge and understand the medium that materializes each creation, from traditional means such as canvas or paper, to the use of technology in works like Birds, a neon light that turns on or off according to the proximity of the viewer, or Shipwreck, the deteriorated mock-ups of some ships that the artist puts back to sail inside methacrylate vases.

The works that will be shown in the exhibition reflect on the enigmatic value of time, how the dividing lines between what was, is and will be fade despite our effort to try to order them, that is what ‘The order of the days’ talks about.

About the artist