The exhibition’s title, Times in Collapse, suggests the disruption of a certain world order. The installation is a dizzying journey through time, from Antiquity to the present day, giving equal weight to fragments of natural matter, mutilated artefacts, rebuses and other more or less clearly identified remains. Connected so incongruously with one another, these ersatz realities cannot but provoke reflection, perhaps even incredulity. Lamas asks a multitude of questions that transcend language, referring to rules yet to be established and in most cases finding the beginnings of answers in the intuitive, error, chance and the unsuspected.

The nave has become a field of action for visitors, who, as they make their way through the exhibition’s itinerary, constantly reinvent the narrative and fictional potential of the works on show, so adding the system’s previously missing link. As Nicolás Lamas himself put it, instead of considering each object in isolation, its purpose is rather to be discerned in the connections and relationships generated between them. This is why everything that might appear absent, forgotten, becomes a fundamental part of the work at hand, starting with the visitors’ physical presence, their viewpoints and infinitely varied interpretations.

Extracts from a text by Isabelle Reiher

Photos © Josépha Blanchet