photo Simon Beckmann

“When I arrived at Joya: AiR I had with me one book, Pablo Neruda’s memories.

"Luminous solitude"

There is an old lavandería (hand wash) near the house. One of the stones in the wall of the lavandería was scored with lines and formed a space-time grid.

Una flor que crece.

Flowers, compressed between the paper and this stone, appear on the surface of the drawing. Placed between the space of the paper and that of the stone, the flowers mark a continual temporality. The history of the site mixes with the present realisation of the drawing and the imminent future that the plants represent.

A luminous solitude floods this residency in the heart of the Sierra Maria - Los Velez. I wanted to testify to the luminous sensation that I lost myself in in this dramatic landscape. Long solitary walks along the rocky, arid trails allowed me to find silent answers.

All time limits seemed to be abolished during those weeks.

I wanted to make a second series of drawings that would evoke this idea of ​​radical, absolute and permanent present. I used a mixture of acrylic and clay. By their furtive passage on the surface of the paper, the plants marked their light imprint in reverse.

"Time is the moving image of eternity" and when time is suspended by this radical present where past and future mingle and merge, we experience the flight of time in which we pass. Joya: AiR makes such an absolute present possible; this retreat in the heart of nature invites a radiant dialectic between the passage and suspension of time”.

Alizée Gazeau . https://alizeegazeau.com/

obra de Alizée Gazeau

“The doors of the 2000 Land Rover slammed.

All my senses needed to be readjusted as I stood in the sun - looking at that vast territory of silence.

Joya: AiR was built on an ancient farm, lost in the Sierra Maria-Los Vélez. Yet, whatever the reasons were to settle in such a hostile territory, generations had inhabited and cultivated this land. In these isolated places, inhabitants have a unique relationship with time and history, often protected from the destructive, as well as regenerative, flow of modernity.

Territories, territories, territories; I became obsessed with the idea. I was exploring the land, experiencing it in all its physicality; and allowing the flow of the mental afterimages develop within me.

I wanted the project that I was going to work on to be linked intimately to the environment in which it would be created. Almería is the only region in Western Europe considered as desert. In late August the whole landscape has been dried out under an unforgiving sun, and the presence of water is only revealed through the scars it has left in the land during the storms. The sun. Over a few days I laid papers, partially covering them with cardboard and stones. As an almost esoteric ritual, I removed shapes and stones carefully as the paper was being bleached.

I was interested in using one dimension to reveal a new one: the use of time in order to create space. Newly-opened territories emerged from the ghostly architectures that appeared on the surface. The paper returns to its primary organic nature, adopting the pigmentation of the landscape, inviting us to thread through a new space of rêverie.

As Emerson reminds us in his essay “Nature”, «In the tranquil landscape [...] man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.»

Joya: AiR is that space and time”.

Thibault Duchesne

http://thibaultduchesne.com/