Exhibition of Pep Duran
21/02/2025 - 23/04/2025
Exhibition at ACVIC and L’Albergueria
Opening 21st February, 6 p.m. at ACVIC, continuing afterwards at L’Albergueria.
"Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead by seeing the old, familiar thing that is overlooked as something new."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Since his earliest exhibitions Pep Duran Esteva has always cultivated collage as a tool for interpreting the world. He is prominent among those artists who insisted upon the essence of collage: building from fragments. The artist treats collage as if it were a stage score. All kinds of scraps, photographs, papers, cardboards, wood, have been his recurring materials. His works have a pronounced and specific theatricality in which the resulting images are like a large kaleidoscope or palimpsest, which he assembles according to the space.
In this new exhibition, the artist starts with some artworks from 2004-2006 in which he used small fragments of photographs from his archive while building clusters of images and unreal landscapes, which today constitutes this continuum that unfolds through the exhibition space; a graphic accumulation, a wordless novel, a large collage. Cúmul, comprises artworks which were exhibited between 2004-2006 under the name of Endurance at the Alejandro Sales gallery in Barcelona. Also creating a pretext for introducing collages made from old paper theatre sets, Papers d’Ombra, recently exhibited at the Museu Can Framis/Fundació Vila Casas in Barcelona, insisting on the concept of a pile, of a fragmentation, of an accumulation of images. And it is also connected with the artist’s exhibition in Vic entitled Teatres Buits in 1996.
The artworks in the exhibition are a chronicle, a frieze, a diary which the artist has been continuously creating; silent sequences in which the characters and their shadows move like presences rescued from old films.
In Cúmul, apart from showing the entire repertoire of photo collages, Pep Duran Esteva treats the exhibition hall as a stage in which the viewer finds small scenes, dialogues, or open monologues.
In parallel with the exhibition at ACVIC, the artist will stage a temporary installation of three sculptural pieces in the Albergueria space, three fixed tables, which invite reflection while connecting with the memory of the place.
Pep Duran Esteva has worked in parallel and from the beginning of his career with scenography. This has allowed him to develop over the years projects focused on a particular way of understanding construction and representation based upon resolving the mise en scene. He was a research intern at the Teatre Lliure in 1978-79.
His last scenography was in January 2023 for QUAN ENS HAGUEM TORTURAT PROU, by Martin Crimp, directed by Magda Puyo, at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. His artworks are in numerous private and public collections such as the Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía (MNACRS), the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) or Artium de Vitoria, Fundació Suñol, Fundació La Caixa, Col·lecció Banc de Sabadell, Fundació Vila Casas, among others. He has exhibited both collectively and individually in cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Donosti, Lisbon, London, Amsterdam, Cologne, Turin, and Copenhagen.
His project SIN ESCENARIO toured in 2009-2010 to the contemporary art museums MARTE in El Salvador, MADC in Costa Rica, MAC in Panama, and the Centro Cultural de España in Mexico, thanks to SEACEX and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
INTERVIEW WITH PEP DURAN
RELATED ACTIVITIES
ESCENARI D’IMATGES
Ludic visit to the exhibition
Saturday 15/03/2025
11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
MIRALLS I MIRADES
Table-talks in the square
Thursday 10/04/2025
5.30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
GUIDED TOUR with ARTIST PEP DURAN
Saturday 05/04/2025
12 p.m.
GUIDED TOURS
Free guided tours to the exhibition
Guided visits for students in nursery, primary and secondary schools, and further education. Also informal education groups, ,and groups from social, cultural, and leisure organisations. Visits are complemented with an educational activity:
- Guided visit 1h.
- Guided visit + Collage activity Fragments del lloc 1.30h
For bookings: 93 885 37 04 or
VENUES:
ACVIC Centre d’Arts Contemporànies
Sant Francesc 1, Vic
Tel +34 93 885 37 04 •
From Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Closed on public holidays
L’albergueria
Carrer de l’Albergueria 1, Vic
From Thursday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Organisers: ACVIC and L’Albergueria
Collaboration: Banc de Sabadell
Thanks to: Fundació Vila Casas, Tinta Invisible Edicions, Rocio Santa Cruz
