UNDER CONSTRUCTION
QUEMAR RAMÓN
Where I come from, around this time of year—just as the olive harvest season ends—the preparation of the olive trees for the next crop begins immediately.
Whether to guide the tree’s growth, to regenerate it, to clear and ventilate its field of action, or to optimize its yield, the usual procedure is to cut away the superfluous branches, allowing the tree to focus all its vigor on the new shoots and fruit-bearing limbs. Once the trimmings are piled up, there’s a custom—now increasingly abandoned—of burning on site what we commonly call “el ramón”: the dry leaves and leftover old branches that must be eliminated, as they would otherwise become a breeding ground for pests or disease. The process is completed with various treatments that aid healing, in which the tree is essentially coated in protective substances—often copper—or even helped to seal its wounds.
"Quemar ramón" is also the title of this project, taking as its point of departure that everyday, cathartic, and purifying ritual in three acts: the pruning—which is our focus this time—the burning, and the healing. It begins with this exhibition, which also marks the opening of a new space, a new stage.
Pruning is an act that is inevitably violent and yet paradoxically feels liberating and essential on the path to healing.
A battle and a celebration at once. A series of decisions where one can no longer postpone the duty of choosing: what to do, where to cut, what to give up, where to focus energy… A physical move into action—by way of cuts and trims—a “cut-and-burn” collage that breaks, when the smoke appears, the monotony and horizontality of the landscape. A liberating exercise in an open and unprejudiced playing field. And curiously, at the same time, a celebration of the need for and richness of transitional moments—even those that seem unproductive. A warning against overproduction and an invitation to respect the process, to take the time it needs, also hoping for the fruit of waiting to ripen.
If some time ago the focus of study was the peripheral botany that grows against the odds in wastelands, this time, deeper into cultivated land, attention is given to the tree that demands all the care, all the manipulation, all the focus: the omnipresent olive tree, bearer of the fluid that fuels the engine.
The reason for this insistent return of the gaze to the land, to the place of the root, can only be guessed... but it doesn’t seem to be a simple matter of nostalgia, nor is it seeking revival or praise. Perhaps it’s a settling of accounts, or a vital need to resolve something that—on top of everything—is still an unknown.
This time, photographic tools—once a privileged family link to the land—have been set aside.
What is pursued is a raw and austere fiction; an exercise that avoids the protective filter of looking through a viewfinder—or a screen—and rejects the immortalized part of what is seen and lived. A real representation with no commitment to reality. Those are the rules of the game today.
It is certainly not a denial, but there is a strong urge to be freed from limitations—whether imposed by others or by oneself—and, above all, a growing desire to enjoy engaging directly with materials and memory, to spend time by doing/creating—undoubtedly the best part of a seasonal profession—letting oneself be carried away.
There is an attempt to intuitively translate the essence of those fragments of everyday scenes stored away, full of textures, colors, and sensations that populate that latent landscape, coming and going, taking form somewhere between experience and imagination:
the grease-stained brown paper that wraps churros,
the slippery, sticky feel of oily hands,
the slow and dense flow of picual olive oil,
the rough bark of twisted limbs reaching toward the sky,
the dryness of the soil and the scent of it when wet, thickening the labor,
the early green hue of fresh-pressed oil and the infinite range of greens in leaves and olives,
the ochre and brown dialogue between earth and monumental stones,
the golden glaze of breakfast bread and of the wooden altarpieces in churches,
the frost-gray of dawn…
And after seasoning all this, when seeing the result—perhaps still without the distance required—and trying not to judge, one observes a tone that feels heavy, local, slow, and somber, wrestling with a gesture that is quick, luminous, universal, and free.
And there are fantasies of apocryphal encounters between figures who, surprisingly, appear uninvited:
Gutiérrez-Solana and Kippenberger chatting without speaking a word; Zabaleta and Philip Guston under the midday sun in the countryside; Morandi, who preferred to stay in his room, sketching a still life that Jason Rhoades had prepared for him with ochíos, virolos and other local goods; even Lucio Muñoz reveals his intimate thoughts to Jimmie Durham in a confessional made by Richard Artschwager. Morris Louis has been mesmerized for a while by the transition from oil to toast, and it's hard to recognize everyone in the crowd, but it seems that Braque, Gris, Penone, Franz West, Thomas Hirschhorn... are arriving for the gathering on the multicolored chairs of the old Café Mercantil terrace. Maruja Mallo, the waitress, will take the men’s orders and spit into each of their coffees...
In the final scene of this act, after the delirium, in a strange shift, one finds oneself staring blankly, gasoline can in hand, imagining how the fire will fulfill its purpose.
Miguel Ángel Tornero
RELATED ARTICLES:
ESPEJO, Bea. "Pensamiento Collage". Babelia. Marzo 2020.