Author: Tomás Barceló
Someone left a comment on one of my videos that stuck in my mind. They said that in a world so noisy and saturated with stimuli, it’s hard to appreciate art because art needs silence and contemplation. And I think they were absolutely right: one of the great challenges for today’s artists is finding that space of calm… without disappearing from the map.
We live surrounded by voices shouting to get someone’s attention. And if you choose to stay quiet, hidden in a corner, it’s very likely that no one will see you. There’s the paradox: we need to be found, but we also need everything to slow down, to become more intimate, more contemplative once people arrive.
To explain it, two images help me:
The first is the circus arriving in town. I’m not talking about the show itself, but about the caravan rolling in along the road, full of voices, colors, unfamiliar animals, and promises of extraordinary things. The arrival of the circus was almost magical. The extraordinary broke into the ordinary. I think art needs a bit of that: an announcement, an irruption, a bold and carefree way of calling attention. Because if no one sees you, no one will be able to contemplate your work.
But once they’ve arrived, the experience should be completely different. Not a circus anymore, but almost a liturgy. Silence, low light, a space that invites you to lower your voice and look without rushing. An atmosphere that slows you down, that prepares your mind for contemplation.
I remember, for example, a beautiful exhibition of sculptures in a holm oak forest: you had to walk, search among the trees, discover the pieces as if they were secrets. It generated silence on its own, a kind of childlike attention mixed with wonder that allowed you to appreciate the beauty of the works in a special way.
Or an improvised exhibition we organized years ago with Alexandra Castillo. The place was nice, but it didn’t have any light. And as a joke we thought: what if we do it in the dark, with flashlights? We tried it. It worked wonderfully. People whispered, lit the pieces carefully, lingered longer before each one, and looked at them with a different kind of attention. That small difficulty—the lack of light—created an intimacy that perfect galleries never achieve.
Ever since then, I’ve dreamed of exhibitions that work almost like traveling puppet theaters, or carnival wonder-houses: places you enter almost secretly, where the encounter with the work is personal, without having to prove anything to anyone. I think of narrow hallways, tiny individual tents, spaces where only one person fits in front of one piece, like in small chapels where you can climb behind the altar and come face to face with the image. Just you and the work, with no audience around, with no need to project anything.
But for someone to enter that silence, they first have to find you. And for them to find you, you need a bit of noise, a bit of circus. I think that’s the key: separating the invitation from the experience. Making the noise necessary to attract, and then offering the silence necessary to contemplate. That delicate balance seems to me one of the most urgent creative tasks of our time.
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