Pep Duran, Shadow Papers

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Image courtesy of Can Framis Museum.

Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and over-looked by everyone, as something new.—F. Nietzsche

Ever since his first exhibitions, Pep Duran Esteva (Vilanova i la Geltrú, 1955) has always cultivated collage as a tool to interpret the world. He is one of the artists who has most asserted the principle of collage: constructing on the basis of fragments. The artist understands collage as if it were a musical score for the stage. The wide range of items he has most frequently used are from photographs, papers, cardboard, wood and textiles, along with his characteristic piles of objects from the nineties. His works of art have a pronounced and specific theatricality in which the resulting images form something akin to a large kaleidoscope or palimpsest, which he assembles according to the space.  

This exhibition project brings together all the works made with old paper decorations, over a period of ten years, which show how he used the front and back sides of the paper, and give us some idea of the chronological development of his imaginary: pieces and related notes creating analogies and linking paths. He has been using them, manipulating them, folding them, remaking them, fascinated and persistent to revive the images he finds and recovers, in the desire to fix moments and reveal narratives.

The works we see today, all exhibited for the first time, are a chronicle, a frieze, a diary that the artist has been continuously creating. They are images and landscapes as seen through a magnifying glass, mirrors, holes, silent sequences in which the characters and their shadows pass by like beings rescued from old films.

Furthermore, as well as showing the full repertoire of photocollages, the Shadow Papers exhibition sees the museum as a stage in which the observer finds small interventions and piles during their visit, as if they were scenes, dialogues or open monologues.

For more events check our online events calendar.