Artists repurpose Mallol filters at Cuina gallery

About thirty artists, including creators from Andorra, take part in the latest edition of the artistic project Els atuells d’en Mallol. This year’s contributions, built around the theme of filters, are on display at the Cuina gallery.

Art critic Ermengol Puig’s remarks on Marcel Duchamp’s readymades introduce the show: recovered everyday objects whose meaning and value shift according to their artistic or poetic potential, intended as an antidote to art’s fetishization and as a challenge to conservative canons. The Mallol project continues in that spirit, asking local artists to repurpose utensils from the former Mallol hardware store.

Carme Invernón turned filters into a necklace, saying she loves necklaces and immediately thought of one on seeing the objects. She frames the piece as an atavistic object—lost and found in time—and pairs it with small porcelain elements and embroidered fabric she stitched with ethnically inspired motifs.

Elisenda Capdevila describes the exercise as an exciting challenge that activates imagination. Her method is to forget what she recognises in the object and look at it as if for the first time, like a child, then probe its material, shape and colour until the object itself suggests what it wants to become. Her filter evolved into a slightly odd, clay-coloured nocturnal moth.

Albert Galindo’s response invoked the Rorschach test. Noting the porosity of the untreated paper and the aleatory quality of brushwork, he painted with drops of coffee to evoke the famous inkblot plates and to prompt viewers to imagine resemblances and reveal tendencies of perception; the piece is an homage to the psychiatrist who devised the test.

Míriam Martínez presented a work about a “filtered life.” She argues that society teaches us to smile and use filters that hide imperfections; her piece addresses imperfect beauty, the hypocrisy of protective façades and the need to remember that the most sincere filter is no filter at all. In her words, showing ourselves as we are, without disguises, is a form of life and honesty.

Jose Travé drew on Goya’s Los Caprichos—particularly The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters—to create dreamlike filter-objects. Using a restrained palette of reds, ochres and beiges, he produced pieces meant to stave off nightmares: “filter-dreams” shaped by Goya’s imaginary.

The exhibition is once again curated by the core group from the now-defunct Aparador. Travé noted that without that space the artists meet only occasionally, and that the Mallol show remains one of the year’s steady events. He and others lament the loss of Aparador’s versatility and public openness: larger rooms now require much more work to fill, and while some eateries host temporary shows, it is not the same.

Alongside the Mallol pieces, the courtyard of the Sant Agustí library exhibits works by local artists included in El cosí d’Estamariu, a selection previously shown in the namesake village.