Skip to main content
The vignettes overflow the José Guerrero Center
12February
Articles

The vignettes overflow the José Guerrero Center

The José Guerrero Center has been taken over by comic characters who, since January 22, have jumped from the pages of newspapers and magazines to the walls of the central museum, belonging to the Diputación de Granada.

"Overflowing vignettes", curated by Francisco Baena, brings us closer to the exhibition comic, a new format that the Center wants to approach in an experimental way: "Beyond the book object, we encourage fiction to develop in architecture, as an update to a system of representation that goes back to the prehistoric murals and jumps up to the post-historic installations".

Thus, "we overflow the two dimensions; we replaced the layout by putting it in the room, we explored the three-dimensional space to produce a true expansion of the graphic field, where the reader could physically immerse himself, inhabit it, explore it ", they affirm in the program of the exhibition.

For this first staging two comic professionals have been invited: Max (Barcelona, ​​1956) and Sergio García (Guadix, 1967), whose respective graphic experimentations have evolved over decades of practice. They have joined the voice, both poetic and academic, of the writer Ana Merino (Madrid, 1971).

The tour begins on the ground floor, in front of vignettes that recreate great classics of literature and cinema: Moby-Dick, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland (printed on a table as a tablecloth) ... and some of the books from which, in less than nothing, tinted characters will begin to escape ...

Those of MAX, make up three stories, under the name of "The line". Two of them are developed in the walls of the Center: ruling the route by stairs and corridors, "Life of Ubrut, in charge of maintenance", whose protagonist is based on the Ubú king, created by the French symbolist Alfred Jarry; and already on the first floor, "Vladimir & Estragón", characters that come out of the book "In search of Godot".

 

MAX. "Life of Ubrut, in charge of maintenance"
MAX. "Life of Ubrut, in charge of maintenance"

 

MAX. "Vladimir & Estragon"
MAX. "Vladimir & Estragon"

 

As a prolog, all the plots of the Catalan artist are linked in "The farce of Vladimir and the White Horse", where the characters of Beckett and the public, Lorca, an interesting intertextual wink to the work of the great poet and dramatist granadino converse.

Further up, on the second floor, Sergio García articulates a multilinear narration that runs through the daily lives of its six protagonists, through twelve mural panels that correspond to the twelve hours of the day. Taking as a reference the structure of the "Book of the Amduat", of the Valley of the Kings, it constructs a continuous city plan (and quite contemporary) from which all the urban plots emerge, as a map.

 

Detail of Sergio García's mural
Detail of Sergio García's mural

 

On the other hand, Ana Merino makes a theoretical and poetic interpretation of the project. She recites the seven poems of her intervention, written and sound, which deals with the comics of Max and Sergio García and also evokes themes such as the weight of creative energy, the voice drawn, the graphic onomatopoeia or the overflowed spaces.

When these characters leave the Center, next March 24, the protagonist will be José Guerrero himself, with "Peregrinaje" (1966-1969), an exhibition that will focus on the years of the artist's return to Spain, after his journey three years in Europe and having been in New York for fifteen years; which is, precisely, the era in which Guerrero ends his immersion in abstract expressionism.

But before, and within the cycle of Visual Culture Lessons, there will be a day on the comic and the museum, in which the authors of the exhibition "Viñetas desbordadas" and the comic expert Enrique Bordes will take part.

 

José Guerrero Center

Oficios Street, 8

18001 Granada

 

Schedule

Tuesday to Saturday and holidays: from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Sundays: from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Free entrance

Guided tours

For the general public: every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. (except holidays)

 

On the cover: Murales by Sergio García

Photos: @yricardo