I’ve been aware of the power of mad.
Ever since I read the magazine.
And I wasn’t event that big of a fan. But there was something there between an eloquent cover, an ilustration, and name for that face: MAD.
This Sant Jordi I walked in Finestres library in Consell de Cent (or is it Diputació?… I never know) to get away from all the crowds outside walking with flowers and books, in gangs of people going insane in the pursue of a signature from a favourite author, or just trying to find the common link between reading, a love one, and a myth.
I had already gotten a book and flower for my loved ones, while I still didn’t have a book. I should point out that we couldn’t get into the main Finestrelles bookstore, but rather the one in front, the one that is specialized in art, comic, and so on. It’s more design and arts driven, and that’s OK with me. The other had a long line to get it, and this one didn’t. Simple decision. As we walked in the place was still kind of pack, and the feeling of distress of trying to find the one book you should get to make it count is always discomforting and amusing. You don’t know if this year’s book (as if it’s the only one you’ll buy, or the only one you’ll read) will be a great one or not. So I wondered around the bookstore trying to smell my away towards the scent attracting unconspicuosly my true needs and desires.
After a few fliping of book pages and reading of back covers, I kept going in towards the art section of the bookstore in the back. I always feel like an impostor in these circumstances, and also rather recomforted by the existance of such holy places to allow great text to reach you own pair of eyes. I was then capture by a strikingly powerful book cover: Beautiful Madness, Art writing as art curating, by Mark Kremer. I fell in love.
The design of a cover is a like a magical spell. There’s an art piece right there. And H1 title. Beautiful madness resembles the greatness of a great social contraction: the repulsion against outcast and the beauty in the minds of complex inner madness we all carry around, and few dare to show it, and share it, as being socially aware of the powerful force that lies in such expressions of art. This is what I need, I thought. So I finally picked up a home-taker.
I left the book in the dinning room table, where a bottom shelf holds a space for big books to pile up there, as a design statement, but also a reading seductor to be pulled off and engaged with. So I started reading it, in a spacious way. The book highlights the authors dual exercise of mixing two things: curating art exhibitions and art writing. Both things interest me, as a wannabé artist meets a wanabé writer. That’s me. Ethernal wanabé.
So what better reading than to find something that could help me read about art curation (to curate my own art) and also to know how to go about art writting, as a format to apply to the expression of what I’ve been struggling to say through the art forms and formats that I’ve played around with over a period of about 9 + 9 years. Throughout this time I’ve been both a writer and an artist, yet I have not been able to pull the results, outputs, exhibitions, or books, in any plausible way. With one (there’s always one) exeption: My first exhibition: «Waiting for the Artist», where I presented a set of painting and drawing that I did with my daughter, in what was a performance of some kind. No picture was sold.
I struggled to write about the exhibition. I also struggle about describing it in a way that I could present the exhibition as a curator of my own work. Maybe I lacked the curator and the conversation that the artists in Mark Kremer’s book had with him. That sort of dialogue was still missing, in textual form. I did have that conversation with the art exhibitor, Toni, owner and curator of La Social, in the art gallery and bookstore in Horts street in Poble Sec.
The exhibition was a exorcism exercise. It needed to happen before anything else could go on. And it did. And I’m proud of having made that step, back then. But still, I never trully ever wrote about that exhibition in a way an artist should do to fully embrace and embody this art expression as a true artist. As you can see, I’m still an impostor.
Yet the pieces are there. And they are part of a period where I did some art thinking in body of expression meant to leap out. This dual exhibition with my daughter became a first degree of permative art that was meant to show us both, latter on, what taking that first step feels like. To strenghten the leap of faith.
When I was in the bookstore I read the short two paragraphs in the back cover of Kremer’s book. That’s all the book gives you as seduction call to action to be taken home. That and the art and title in the cover desing. Flipping the book is an action that takes a second level of comitment in this love affair. It frames the content inside, as much as the table of context provides a structured information for one who wishes to step in, or not.
On that back cover, it’s highlighet that: «both activities, curating exhibitions and art writing, construct a meaningful narrative about artefacts and artist, both interact with a public, viewers/readers; both make space fo the experience of art objects.» That in itself also created a dual intention in my head: my own desire to reach out, and the need I have to collaboratively engage a community towards the transformation of our health and social systems across the globe. It’s part of the same goal, where my art, and my work, both interact and play with the persona that represent who I am in both spaces.
Today I arrived at page 99 of the book, and hit the epicenter of Beautiful Madness by entering the world of artist Christiaan Bastiaans, through the lens of Mark Kremer. The interaction among them, and the interpretation of Bastiaans’ projects in this dual merge of ying and yang.
And it all made sense, once again, like that day in Finestrelles, in San Jordi.
ALLS