The artist Álvaro Soler-Arpa has presented at the Círculo de Bellas Artes Messenger species‘, an exhibition composed of 24 sculptures that explore the relationship between nature and pollution that threatens the survival of numerous species in an increasingly fragile environment.
As reported this Tuesday by the Círculo, the exhibition can be seen in the Goya Room from this Wednesday, October 9, 2024 until January 26, 2025, and is curated by Marián Boadas.
The sculptures are inspired by the principles of evolution and represent mutant animals, whose strange morphology is the result of genetic mutations caused by pollution. These fictitious beings, located in the near future, play with the limits between the possible and the impossible, the real and the imaginary, the graceful and the tortuous, the entity has detailed.
“Getting to these sculptures has been a very long road. I have always liked anatomy and bones. I connected with nature through animal bones. At first I rescued them from restaurants, then from slaughterhouses, from garbage dumps. I learned to treat them and clean them with a taxidermist. I spent hours cleaning them, that makes you reflect on life and death, on the mark we leave on our planet,” said Álvaro Soler-Arpa.
The Círculo de Bellas Artes has stressed that Soler-Arpa’s sculptures are “fictitious victims of the irresponsibility of modern man, reflecting the tragic reality of many endangered species.” “Radioactivity causes beautiful iridescence in their fur, transgenesis gives them limbs of elegant extravagance,” he noted.
In this imagined future there are feathered elephants, bipedal sheep, hairy reptiles, ruminant amphibians, two-headed lizards, and moles with luminous eyes. This exhibition is part of the set of activities that the Circle encompasses under the heading of ‘Climate Emergency’.
“During the coming months, and by virtue of our environmental commitment, the Circle will offer proposals that help us combat the climate crisis through reflection, art, technology and science. Álvaro’s work is a clear example of how to contribute “to raise awareness of one of the great current challenges of humanity: facing the consequences of the environmental excesses committed. His sculptures provoke the necessary reflection on the type of ecosystem in which we seem destined to live if we do not take urgent measures”, highlighted the director of the Circle, Valerio Rocco.
In the words of Marián Boadas, its curator, ‘Messenger Species’ “is an invitation to contemplate our position as inhabitants of a planet in transformation.” “Through the visionary gaze of Álvaro Soler-Arpa, we witness the convergence between the intrinsic beauty of nature and the existential challenges we face as a species. ‘Messenger Species’ is, ultimately, a celebration of interdependence, a tribute to the beauty of nature, a space dedicated to the contemplation of the elegance of its forms and a call to find new ways of living our relationship with it from respect and humility,” he detailed.