Javier Garló

Residency programme: June – July 2019

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June
At this month’s open studio, Javier Garló presents the beginning of his research about regional materials and craft practices. Since he arrived in Blanca, he has been acquiring skills from local crafts people, using esparto and clay, and transforming the medium, to create an intuitive link between himself and the traditional customs. A certain sense of nostalgia filters into his work, as well as a desire to connect with particular characters: those of the past as well as those who have not yet abandoned primordial lifestyles.
Javier’s work predominantly highlights the emotional value behind craft, beyond the practical functions. His objects radiate a certain totemic, hidden significance. Strong in their symbolic power, they are like shells that allude to a ritualistic, ancestral essence. While rooted in the comforting stability of tradition, its dormant properties can also emanate some dark and sinister undertones.

Working and exhibiting in Casa Jazmin’s snug interlocked chambers, Javier’s work has a cellular relationship with the domestic sphere, which further accentuates the intimate, penetrating character of each object, rooted in rural patterns and conventions.

July
In this open studios, Javier Garló presents the second part of his research about local materials and ancestral practices of the valley.
Javier intends to continue a knowledge transfer that has always been transmitted by oral tradition.
He adds a video which recreates the imanary of the project. A story about barter as a ritual, about the crafts and rural knowledge.
In the film appear real characters such as Antonio José Salmerón (“El Niño Pleita”), others to which who refers through specific objects, like Pedro Navarro (sparto craftsman), and invented characters like the boatmen, two locals link to the valley and AADK project: Félix Soriano Molina  y Carlos älvarez Mata.
In their journey along the Segura River, they flow and merge with the landscape as traditions do. An initiatory journey Cieza-Blanca through the green Murcian desert  loaded with symbolic references and of work pieces developed in these two months.