Argamasa inauguration

The Martín Chirino Artistic Residency, Creators 2023, exhibits the results of the third edition of this call. The residency, convened last March, this year maintained the geographical limits of the entire national territory, in line with the sculptor's vocation for his Foundation, "from the Canary Islands to the world." The 2021 edition and Cristina Ortega's 'Transeúntes' project has traveled to various national and international art meetings and fairs, and Salvador Jiménez-Donaire presented “La Lentitud de Las Piedras” in 2022, a highly successful research project of public and critics, whose catalog is available through the Foundation's website.

This year "Argamasa" is the result of the research of Tenerife artist Abraham Riverón. The inauguration, scheduled for Friday, December 1 at 7:30 p.m., will be attended by the artist, and will remain open until January 28, 2023. The residency, called earlier this year, was unanimously ruled in favor of the Argamasa proposal. Regarding the Riverón project, the jury wanted to “highlight its double aspect of a research project faithful to the texture and material of Martín Chirino's work, as well as the space that houses it, the Castillo de la Luz, and its walls. The project, after previous study and research, will bear fruit in the production of artistic works that have to do with the historical, sculptural and conceptual character of the buildings and their elements. “We will experiment with the materiality and form present in the spaces.”

Argamasa delves into the idea of ​​the public monument, the invisible and the image related to the defense spaces of these islands, through an installation about the remains and the ruin as another way of understanding the sculptural. Castles, which are now museums, point to the endless fortifications, tunnels and walls that are also garbage dumps and busy places of defense, intimacy and social survival. At the same time, the city in the process of construction/destruction becomes an archaeological space, where its sites and rubble are monuments of the territory, its history and identity. In the words of the artist, “monument of nothing and everything, or perhaps of time, wind and territory, like the sculptures of Martín Chirino, which commemorate the immaterial.”