Intersticio is pleased to present ‘Claro el Bosque’ the inaugural exhibition of the new space In Madrid at Calle Alcántara 31, a year after the opening of our space in London. 

The group exhibition ‘Claro del Bosque’ includes works by Josefina Anjou (SE), Nora Aurrekoetxea (ESP), Lucía Bayón (ESP), Isabella Benshimol (VE), Julia Crehueras (ESP), Diego Delas (ESP), Johanna Odersky (CH), Andrés Izquierdo (ESP), Maren Karlson (DE) and Paul Maheke (FR), exploring the spaces, symbols poetics and rituals involved in the process of the occult, the collective and their healing and empowering force.

‘The clearing in the forest is a center where it is not always possible to enter’¹. We cross a verge towards a desire, a dream, a vision, a place for communion and reunion. It is a productive center, but also the start of an exit; a space for conspiration and whisper, where defenseless ghosts, elucubrations of futures and hidden memories navigate. 

The access reveals itself as accidental, frontal, at night or during the day, it is a surprise, a futurity. ‘It is the immediate lesson of the clearances in the forest: you don’t have to look for them, neither look for anything from them’², they will offer themselves to you.

Upholded images appear, recalling encountered lifes, breezes, blindings or reliques from a dream. Unerring spaces lighting a path,
sloped on occasions.
Blind maps shaking us.  

We would not know how we enter,
neither remember the exist,
if a clearing in the forest invites us to access its original feeling. 

A space of prophecies, latent and denied knowledges shrinking away from binarity. Disseminated rituals across new ways of doing, spaces for propositions evading a limitant reason. 

A scenario for healing without even knowing how long that moment may last. A frame for a ritual, traces of light and shadow, whispers crossing our feet. 

We cross the verge and we mutate bodies, circulating across a space of adoration and pause,
daydream and emptiness, where shadows,
games,
failed plans, cover us presenting the listening of those voices from the substratum.

The clearing in the forest is an offering, a recovery. A place of encounter where to shed our skin, remodel the emptiness, listening, a space for a collective reborn.

The brighting light, discordant, appears over a sky, ‘discontinuous, a clearing itself too’³ . 

1
Zambrano, María
Claros del bosque
(Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1977)
p.27

2
Ibid, p.27

3
Ibid, p.30

Intersticio is pleased to present ‘this light, toxic’, a group exhibition curated with Alejandro Alonso Díaz. The show presents works and poems by Dionne Brand, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Barbara Hammer, Diana Policarpo and Leticia Ybarra. The exhibition is accompanied by a text written by Alejandro Alonso Diaz.

This exhibition has been possible thanks to the generous support of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).

In this light, toxic a world of interconnected particles unwinds through light and sonic vibrations. The different parts of the self are entangled in multiple processes of toxicity: from the physiological to the environmental, from the psychic to the sensorial.

The exhibition examines how our perception is embedded in toxic objects and bodies through our corporeal membranes, senses, and tissues. Isn’t “light pollution” an euphemism for the pollution of human, animal, and plant vision? Doesn’t this coy expression build on an ancient analogy between the inner luminosity delimited in the eye and the immeasurable light of the element, notably fire?¹

this light, toxic is a proposition to engage with the profanation of silence and the perversion of images as they cut across multiple levels of existence. Breaking through our dreams, pesticides, relations, metaphysical dimensions, radioactive materials, sounds and shadows, the smell of toxicity, like a poisonous flower we breathe in, becomes us.

1
Marder, Michael
Being Dumped
Environmental Humanities
(2019) 11 (1): 180–193

Alejandro Alonso Díaz (ESP) is a curator, writer and researcher whose work explores the metabolic encounters between natural, social and poetic structures of knowledge. He is the founding director of fluent, a para–institution dedicated to artistic research. His writing on art, moving image and nature has been published in magazines including Frieze, Terremoto, Mousse and several exhibition catalogues. His practice is concerned with epistemologies around notions of environmentalism, love and neo–feudal communality, often grounded in an enquiry into other forms of existence, and rehearsing radical ways of otherness. He has curated and participated in projects for the Serpentines Galleries, London; Matadero, Madrid; Chisenhale, London; 18th St Arts Centre, Los Ángeles; the Athens Performance Biennale; Tenderpixel; Fundación Botín; P/////AKT, Amsterdam and Jupiter Woods among many others. Currently he serves as an associate curator at Fundación Sandretto Re–Rabaudengo.

Dionne Brand (CA) has a legion of literary credentials. Her latest novel, Theory, won the 2019 OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Literature, and was a Globe and MailBest Book. Her latest poetry collection, The Blue Clerk,was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize. Her collection Ossuarieswon the Griffin Poetry Prize, and other collections have won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Among her novels, In Another Place, Not Here was selected as a NYT Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book by the Globe and Mail; At the Full and Change of the Moon was selected a Best Book by the LA Times; and What We All Long For won the Toronto Book Award. In 2006, Brand was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing, and from 2009 to 2012 she served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. In 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada. Brand is a Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto.

Dorota Gawęda (PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (LT) are an artist duo established in 2013 and based in Basel (CH). Their work spans performance, installation, fragrance, sculpture, video and drawing. They have exhibited internationally including: Swiss Institute, New York ( 2020); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2020); MWW, Wroclaw (2020); Kunstverein Düsseldorf ( 2020 and 2016); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); MMOMA, Moscow (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2017); ICA, London (2017); MOMA, Warsaw (2016) among others. Their recent solo shows include presentations at: Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2020); OnCurating, Zürich (2020); Body Archive, Zürich (2020); Trafo Gallery, Budapest (2020); Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (2020 and 2018); Fri Art – Centre d’Art de Fribourg / Kunsthalle Fribourg and Wallriss (2020); Futura, Prague (2019); Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (2018); Cell Project Space, London (2018). Upcoming exhibitions include: Swiss Performance Award, Le Grütli, Geneva; Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (solo); Istituto Svizzero, Milan ( performance); Swimming Pool, Sofia (solo) . The duo are also the founders ofYOUNG GIRL READING GROUP ( 2013 – ) and co-initiators of it’s online archive hosted by ARIEL, Copenhagen.

Barbara Hammer (USA) was born in Hollywood in 1939. Her documentary and experimental films are considered among the earliest and most extensive representations of lesbian identity, love, and sexuality. Accompanying her career as a filmmaker, Hammer has time and again worked with performance and installation. She has participated in group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial in 1993, the WACK! show at MOCA L.A. and MoMA PS1 in 2007/2008. With film retrospectives at New York’s MoMA in 2010 and the Tate Modern, London, in 2012, the artworld’s interest in Hammer’s work has recently increased. Hammer has been a teacher for many years and held a professorship at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (CH). She died in 2019.

Diana Policarpo (PT) is a London based visual artist and composer whose work consists of visual and musical media, including drawing, score, sculpture, acoustic composition, performance and multi-channel sound installations. She finished her MFA at Goldsmiths in 2013. Her work investigates power relations, popular culture and gender politics, juxtaposing the rhythmic structuring of sound as a tactile material within the social construction of esoteric ideology. She has recently had solo exhibitions at GNRtion, Biennal of Contemporary Arts, Braga, PT (April 2019), Belo Campo / Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon, PT (2018) or Kunstverein Leipzig, DE (2017). Her work has also been included recently in group exhibitions at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (MACE), Elvas, PT (2020) or Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisboa, PT (May 2019). Policarpo has presented performances and readings at Passos Manuel, Porto, PT; Kunsthall Oslo, NO; LUX – Moving Image, The Lexington, Tenderpixel Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Cafe OTO, Pump House Gallery, IMT Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Leticia Ybarra (ESP) is a poet, artist and curator. She runs the department of Literature and Thought of La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain), where she also curates the festival ‘Gelatina’, among other projects. She is shortly publishing her first book of poems with Caniche Editorial (2021). Her poetry and artistic work deals with universes around the child’s world, of dreams, fantasy and religion, appropriating its nonlinear fecundity to deal with trauma, their relation with the body or the concept of death; as well as to explore questions of reproduction and non-normative architecture. Recently, her work has been exhibited as part of ‘pen pressure: a show of poetry, fantasy and faith’ in Haus Wien (Vienna, September 2020), PoemRoom (Madrid, March 2020), This is Jackalope (Madrid, December 2019) or Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporánea (Valencia, September 2019).

Text by Alejandro Alonso Díaz (PDF)

Download Press Release + List of Works (PDF)

There is a void inside me that I need to fill up by talking, but what I say is always off the mark. Off the mark. Either I am a mirror or a hole. I don’t want to be a reflection of others. A hole is empty but it is real. (Hurriedly, nervously opens eyes) What? (turns only head to left) Has anyone arrived? Anyone there? (Anxious) A visit? (Closes eyes) Hush! Let’s not get nervous. Nobody is here. A voice of something already heard, of something already learned is always repeated when I open my mouth to speak. Indistinct and hazy dark place. Indoor or outdoor space. Words are truly of others, but let’s talk as if we were buried under damp earth. It could be a desert, an olive grove, or the plaza of an empty city in northern Spain. The stage slopes downward. Unless we want the horse to wakes us up, the far is much higher than the near. The ground looks like a hard shoulder, and I have trust in its consistency, but it is eating me. (Pause) Can you hear that buzzing sound? I can tell you cruelly have exit attempts of transformation. You can’t guess how much I want to throw myself into the sea now that I feel the water getting closer and closer. Look at my feet, you will see yourself reflected. I am truly becoming a specter. Total-image, which is to say, death in person1. Here is Sadak climbing from a stone to the leading mountain where the waters are. Not even today. I can’t transcribe it. What? Nothing. (Pause) Do you think this is normal for someone like me? Upside down olive branches are suspended at the top giving the feeling of falling or floating. The flies have stopped buzzing. I might be asleep. Everything deep is absurd. A dim light frames the action. The depths of yesterday sound today like a deception, and we must feel ashamed. It seems nighttime and is cold but it doesn’t feel like December. Words are confusing because they lack of precision and accuracy. Now is Spring. So yesterday…what was it, if not Spring? Something I learned, I can’t remember now. Time passes in a strange way. It’s like I can stretch it out, stir it up, and do whatever I want with it. If I think that everything happens quickly, I truly believe it. But quickly…as for what? At the same speed, of course. Trying to correctly define something must be paralyzing. If words feed the transformations of ideas, they must foster doubt. Synonyms are enemies of the speaker and they make us stutter. (Pause) Has anyone arrived? (Turns his head to the right) Is anyone there? No visits? I want something more. Distractions and made-up words encourage the disuse of a language. People haven’t stopped talking to each other. (Manages to stand up. Annotation of movement, paired silence. Change of light to a lighter one) (Voice of a radio announcer) A magnificent sun is shining in this country. Dawn marvelously, letting go absurd winters. No man’s land, were you born somewhere? If you are children of the Earth, defend the Sun that still shines because there isn’t a body which doesn’t shine in the light. At your side, you will tell him. (Pause) We already know that we do not all share the same opinions. It is purely a geographical problem. You are there and I am here. No, no, no…it can’t be…what can’t be? The more you fight, the more is going to pull you in.  Please help, I am drowning. (Noise of water entering the character’s mouth) Help? I don’t want to have sex with strangers. The Dead! (opening their eyes a lot). The dead, and every day feels like an open (wide eyes open) and close (closes eyes) of eyes. Another day that, suddenly, without realizing, a heart beats differently. The day dawns, and although this noise gets magnified, it helps me speak. Speaking four different languages involves the speaker to stop speaking their mother tongue well. This should be the difference between different and distinct. Exactly. Don’t you think everyone feels the same? Consciousness, conscience, conscience, conscience…While still losing their ideas of metamorphosis. Have you found a movement? Changing, variant and mutable bodies to be truthful to all that change. Accept to stop thinking what has been thought a while ago. Be a faithful unattached host. But for that we should have a sense of control.

Intersticio is proud to present Johanna Odersky’s first solo show in the UK.

Johanna Odersky (Swiss, b. 1993) is a visual artist and musician based in Frankfurt am Main. She is a graduate from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule and studied in the class of Judith Hopf. Much of her work revolves around exploring how human experience is organized and embodied and how relationships between body, mind and the external world are always and necessarily situated in discursive power relations. These questions are echoed in her musical work and performances, which she produces under the name of “Iku” Her work has been shown in festivals, galleries and other art spaces across Europe in Japan, Mexico and the US.

For those far away or unable to attend you can now do an online tour through this link: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=oB3jwqv96r9

Press Release (PDF)

Artist's CV (PDF)