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Follas ventureiras. José María Seijas

May 22 – July 7, 08
Another exhibition in the series devoted to international surrealism: Follas Ventureiras, by the Galician artist José María Seijas.

This series of exhibitions began on the Granell Foundation’s tenth anniversary in 2005, this being the eighth one.
The artist presents several series of collages, made between 1996 and 2000, totalling 41 works divided into two groups. The first group of collages, larger in size, features such evocative titles as Bird Trainer, Myths and Science or Mosaic for a Millennium.
The other series features compositions that also employ the collage as the plastic methodology, but with the peculiarity of being based on banknotes from different countries. In relation to the old banknotes used as the basis of the compositions, objets trouvés that are no longer an object of desire, the artist recovers their plastic qualities and uses the technique of collage to give them a poetical value. In the artist’s hands, they acquire a new value that is very different from the purpose for which they were made. This involves turning what could be considered the antithesis of poetry, an object far removed from the kingdom of the spirit –the currency of the capitalist economy, paper money– into a surrealist poetical object. All of the exhibition’s works, featuring a classical style in the best tradition of Max Ernst’s collage poetics (diaphanous composition and exquisite style, with an abundance of nuances), have a high ironic content, which along with their evocative power, result in timeless images that make us reflect on universal themes: violence, the eternal dialectic between the myth and science, or key themes in surrealist poetics such as love and desire.