Enric Farrés Duran

NoguerasBlanchard is pleased to present Acid Love Forever, a new exhibition by artist Enric Farrés Duran. It articulates a series of works that form part of the research process initiated in his exhibition Things that happen, which took place at MACBA (Barcelona) in 2021. Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of MACBA, Farrés Duran has developed a project with the Museum’s historical archive. The artist became immersed in the archive, reviewing the limits of its definitions in order to reveal its inner workings.

“Acid Love Forever is a promise. The material condition of the archive tells us that it will never change, that it will remain stable over time . in order to preserve intact what it contains. Three open boxes impossible to close[1]. The material condition of the archive is words and substances. The neutrality of the substances is transformed by the words, being and not being the same again and again. The object is affected by the information that accompanies it, dynamiting the hierarchical dependence between information and matter. The material condition of words is an industrially produced substance[2]. It is nobody’s saliva. The condition of discourse is synthetic.

We understand the world as a place susceptible of being labeled: a common place, a discourse announced through historical formats[3]. In the course of the pictorial activity, documents are generated. Before and after[4]. The story told from a non-narrative image. The adjudication of characteristics through labels as an anachrony in force, as an apparently intact ideology: taxidermized. Acid free ideology, certifiably neutral.

The classic rotting, requires taxidermy to appear alive[5]. The art of making something dead seem alive: Empailler – to fill with straw. In an empty envelope the fungus is king[6]: Result of the Document Infection Workshop.

The materiality of the certificate shows us its fictional condition[7], its character of construct, its capacity of affection. The certificate is affected by its material condition, –the pigments that certify are finished–, or are disordered in an image that represents itself, where there is no recognition, but description[8]. Fems nous, fems vells[9] .”

– Enric Farrés Duran

[1] Acid. Sculpture, conservation carton. 2021.
Love. Sculpture, conservation carton. 2021.
Forever. Sculpture, conservation carton. 2021.

[2] Discurso – saliva de nadie [Speech – no one’s saliva]. Object, synthetic saliva. 2021.

[3] Hashtag mundo – pintura histórica [Hashtag world – historical painting]. Paint, acrylic, gouache and pencil on linen. 2021.

[4] Documentos (Antes – pruebas de color) [Documents (Before – color proofs)]. Drawing, gouache and pencil on paper. 2022
Documentos (Después – reservas) [Documents (After – reserves)]. Painting, acrylic and gouache on wood. 2022

[5]Banco de Richard Meier pudriéndose (disecado). [Bench of Richard Meier rotting (dissected)]. Sculpture. 2022.

[6] Hongo disecado [Desiccated fungus]. Offset print on paper with desiccated fungal infection. 2022.

[7] Certificado a medias [Half certificate]. Document, ink on paper. 2021.

[8] Ostra [Oyster]. Photographs. 2022.

[9] fems nous, fems vells. Photograph. 2022.

With many thanks to: Alba Sanmartí, Gina Giménez, Rafel Bianchi, Xavier Ristol, Temur Dokhnadze, Arte y Memoria, Miquel Matas, Jorge Blasco.