Yapci Ramos | pelo, orgasmo y jersey de cuello alto | Davis Museum Barcelona
www.yapciramos.com
What/who inspired the work?
Sexuality, femininity, and self-determination are issues that have been always present in my work in
a very personal way. This piece arises from remembering those moments of intimacy that we have with
ourselves, from discovering a little bit more about what solitude means and how fragile our interactions are.
What do you hope its viewers will feel/think?
All interpretations made by the viewer are valid. I give them maximum freedom for interpreting the piece
according to the personal experiences of each one. Once the piece is exhibited, it belongs to the public
and it is the public that closes it.
Why did you choose the medium, subject matter, style?
Each piece needs a different medium or tool. I specify them as the project progresses.
In this case, it is an installation consisting of hair and a video.
Claire Ducène | Imaginary Museum | Davis Museum Barcelona
www.claireducene.be
What/who inspired the work?
When I discovered the Mini Davis Lisboa Museum I immediately thought about the mental image process.
Exhibiting such a process in the smallest possible place can be interpreted as an infinite place
where the viewer would be immersed in thousands of multifaceted images, a kind of infinity where
the viewer cannot escape. By appealing to my memory in a random-access way, I wanted to get lost
in my reminiscences. I would say it’s like a labyrinth where there is no door to get out.
Like a mental representation of an unlimited place, somewhere undefined.
Gaston Bachelard defined the dream house as a suitable place and vector for dreams.
The imaginary museum is also kind of oneiric since it doesn’t exist… It is rather a fantasy
elaborated by multiple personalities and fiction. Somehow, memory is like a huge labyrinth where
you get lost in our past.
These spaces are multiplied like the analogic memory and the remembering processes.
Spaces are multiple and obsessive.
The imaginary museum also evokes André Malraux’s work. The French writer made his mental catalog
of artworks. Paintings, sculptures, drawings that were placed in his memory to constitute his collection
of artistic souvenirs.
And of course, Belgian surrealism has always been a major influence.
What do you hope its viewers will feel/think?
I hope the viewers will make the mental and physical journey through their images and try to remember
their past, making their mental labyrinth. Which person or objects or setting they will choose to build
an imaginary place. A long time ago, the Ancients in the Antics worked with the concept of a Palace of
Memory to activate memories. The system was used to remember objects, concepts, people, words, and so on.
It’s quite simple to think about a place you know very well, a place like your childhood home. When you enter
this space, you can choose how objects and concepts will be displayed. Every time you will remember the path,
you’ll also remember the things and words inside that place. That was one of the great mnemonic principles of
the ancients.
I’d like the visitors to try and get lost by remembering places that are into his mental storage, his
myriad of thoughts. The results of these mental processes give way to stories, whether real or fictitious
that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Why did you choose the medium, subject matter, style?
For the Davis Museum, I wanted to reproduce the model of the inside of a museum where you find small
images. You can travel through sculpture and discover mental travel in the visual work. The idea is
that of the museum within a museum. When you mentally go through the inside of the labyrinth,
you discover images printed on Plexiglas. A Plexiglas that looks as fragile as glass. It can break.
Images are so transparent they disappear.
The complementary piece of artwork is a video of the mental journey of a character wandering through
the inside of a 3D reproduction of the imaginary museum. That character builds up his own mental space
and observes the photographs, images that activate its memory and allows us to let his imagination
free in a space that doesn’t exist, on the border between reality and fiction.
It is about forgetting, dreaming, unconsciousness and stopping time.
To activate the memory and to go back in the past, I retrospect settings, fictitious places from my
collection of memories. In the video, the audience discovers many media with different rhythms from
slow to fast and were painted, drawn and electronic images communicate with one another.
Images are blurry, hazy, and sometimes almost illegible. Time passes by and the images, people and
places progressively fade out.
Gary Duehr | Unknown Suspects & Mouse | Davis Museum Barcelona
www.garyduehr.com
What/who inspired the work?
Unknown Suspectswas inspired by the media obsession with foreign-looking suspects whenever
there is a terrorist incident - a kind of fear-mongering. Mouse was inspired by the mundanity of everyday
objects.
What do you hope its viewers will feel/think?
I hope Suspects provokes a bit of critical thinking, and Mouse is a fairly deadpan joke about
obsolete technology and our fetishism.
Why did you choose the medium, subject matter, style?
For Suspects I worked directly from the web and translated to stencils and spray graphite,
to make the images more "real." For Mouse, cement is pretty useless in terms of technology,
so it's part of the joke.