A Bridge To Stay On

Sala Alcalá 31, a venue managed by the Regional Government of Madrid, is pleased to announce the public opening of A Bridge To Stay On, an exhibition in which artist Guillermo Mora (Alcalá de Henares, 1980) transforms the gallery itself and tests the boundaries between artistic disciplines.

The show curated by Pia Ogea was conceived specifically for this architectural setting where, until 24 July, visitors will be able to enjoy a total of forty works by the youngest artist to exhibit individually at Sala Alcalá 31 to date.

In A Bridge To Stay On, Guillermo Mora’s chromatic universe, colour schemes and associations take over the building’s architecture and alter its structure to propose a new way of traversing and experiencing the space: beginning with a monumental, immersive installation in the main hall—twelve structures in the form of a broken frame cross the space, replacing linear circulation with a zigzagging route—spectators step inside painting to rediscover the last fifteen years of Mora’s artistic output. .

New practices versus old norms

Continuing Guillermo Mora’s line of investigation, A Bridge To Stay On challenges the traditional limits of painting—two-dimensionality, frontality, representation, frame, wall—while also establishing connections with more spatial disciplines like sculpture and installation. As the artist explains, “We cross, drive or walk over bridges, but few of us consider staying on them, remaining in the middle, not being on one side or the other but on the bridges themselves.”

In this way, he shatters conventional dichotomies and even pre-established definitions. According to Pía Ogea, curator of the exhibition, “The bridges that Mora builds between painting, sculpture and architecture open our eyes to other kinds of interdisciplinary associations. Rather than ‘either-or’ dichotomies, his work posits associations such as the pictorial in the sculptural (or vice versa). Understanding his work in this light, we realize that painting sits in the middle of that bridge, deriving sustenance from both ends: A bridge to stay on.”

Colour, paint, light and architectural structure

In A Bridge To Stay On, the usual path through Sala Alcalá 31 has been altered by colour. The hierarchies of the space (top/bottom, main floor/first floor) are erased, integrated by the colour applied to the columns that rise to meet the large vaulted ceiling designed by Antonio Palacios, thus creating new routes for experiencing the pictorial.

The small, intimate, process-centred colour studies that Guillermo Mora has been using for years undergo a change of scale in this exhibition: from private to public, from paper to architecture, from micro to macro. For all the pieces in the show—from the magnificent central installation to the delicate works occupying the floor, corners, ceiling or walls—play with scales and hierarchies and suggest new ways of traversing, seeing and experiencing both space and painting through the eyes of one of Spain’s most nationally and internationally renowned visual artists.

Find more information about the exhibition here.

Read more about Guillermo Mora