The Casa de Alba Foundation “fulfills the dream” of the 14th Duke of Alba with the new contemporary space that will house the exhibition “A New World”.
MADRID, February 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Denise De La Rue was chosen by the Casa de Alba Foundation as an artist to open the new contemporary art space at the Liria Palace with the exhibition “A New World”, with which she explores the world “unwavering curiosity” of humanity through a fictional “dialogue” between Christopher Columbus and NASA.
Inspired by the “human spirit of discovery”, the artist, as she explained this Friday at the inauguration, used the 21 autograph letters of Christopher Columbus from the collection of the Casa de Alba and established a “parallel with space exploration” and the expeditions of NASA.
“Everything revolves around the impulse that humans have to go beyond their limits.” explained De La Rue, who pointed out that in Columbus’ time “the sea was the next frontier, the great mystery,” while “now it is the stars.”
So, after contacting NASA and obtaining permission to “use certain texts” and use “the word NASA” “ex profeso,” De La Rue created a total of 17 sculptures that take visitors back to Christopher Columbus’ voyage in 1492 to “ Iconic” lead “Apollo 11’s moon landing in 1969. The work also deals with current technological advances and the “planned exploration” of Mars in the 2030s.
In this way, the sculptures are inspired by artifacts and objects present on NASA missions and in a number of replicas of meteorites. In particular, De La Rue was inspired by a meteorite that hit.in Northern Russia, in Siberia,” which has “silver textures and crystals, some of them dark.”“to create the balls and disks of the collection. As he explained, the “meteorite crystals” were made with natural resins, such as those from a tree in Tanzania.
In addition to unpublished pieces, the exhibition also includes artistic replicas of objects the collection of NASA and the pilot Buzz Aldrin, who took part in the first trip to the moon in 1969. In this way, the artist tries to connect Columbus’ voyage and the conquest of space, the exploration of the planet and the cosmos through the “first-person testimonies of its protagonists”.
In his opinion, man’s quest to “go beyond borders and discover new worlds” is to answer the question: “Where do I come from?” “Everything comes from the great explosion, the ‘Big Bang’, and we are all stardust , hence these meteorites,” he said. This was stated by the 19th Duke of Alba, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, who presided over the event, during the inauguration “Protecting and supporting contemporary artists is essential to understanding the history of the Casa de Alba collections.”. “Without this patronage, we would not be able to enjoy unique works today. As Duke of Alba, I am committed to supporting art in all its expressions and artists,” he added.
AN EXHIBITION EXPANDING TO SEVERAL ROOMS OF THE PALACE
The Liria Palace will also host an installation in other rooms that will complete the public visit with a “multisensory experience” based on the “Voyager 1 and 2” probes, according to the Casa de Alba Foundation.
These investigations meant, as stated by the institution, not just an “impressive technical achievement” for being the first to enter interstellar space and being more than 11,000 million away from Earth, but also contained the famous “Golden Record,” a collaboration between renowned scientist Carl Sagan and NASA.
The first of these, located in the ballroom, according to De La Rue, consists of an audio that “combines today’s music with 19th century bands that danced in the ballroom” to create an immersive experience that combines “time and space connects”. Past and present”.
Down in the library, a “Gold Record Vinyl Replica” sits next to a screen showing updated images of Voyager 1 on its interstellar journey. “In The album contains sounds from the earth, music, animals from the jungle, music from that time. – as De La Rue specified – because the creators thought that if an alien civilization eventually finds the probes, they will be able to find out who we are as a human race.”
Finally, in the Estuardo room you can see a replica of a meteorite surrounded by rings that symbolize the first orbits of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It is a piece in which “the light changes depending on the time of day,” says the artist “I wanted to respect the light of the palace” and that his work “coexists with everything else.”
THE WISH OF THE XIV DUKE OF ALBA, CARLOS MIGUEL, WILL BE FULFILLED
“In the 19th century, the 14th Duke of Alba, Carlos Miguel, who made the ‘Gran Tour’, planned a gallery here, in the area where we are now, to protect and support contemporary artists, sculptors, ” he said. explains in the presentation of the cultural director of the Casa de Alba Foundation, Álvaro Romero Sánchez-Arjona.
The duke, as Romero pointed out, “had come into contact with Cánovas” and had commissioned works from artists such as Antonio Solá, “copying the model he had seen at the Spanish Academy in Rome and making it in Madrid “. “It would have been the first museum” and would have exhibited “the entire collection he bought during his travels in Italy“, with the aim of creating “a gallery to protect these contemporary artists”.
Two centuries later, the new contemporary art space of the Liria Palace, located in the old stables, “closes the circle that was proposed at the beginning of the 19th century”. as the cultural director of the Casa de Alba Foundation concluded.
Denise De La Rue is a multidisciplinary artist with a career spanning decades. Recognized as the first artist to be granted permission by Picasso’s successor to use the iconic work Guernica in a contemporary work, marking a milestone in 2014 and becoming the first art project to be presented during a United Nations General Assembly in New York.
His work is characterized by the ability to reinterpret historical masterpieces in collaboration with world-renowned museums such as the Prado Museum and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Additionally, Denise De La Rue is an activist committed to solidarity and social causes and is passionate about promoting women’s rights and gender equality.
