Paths is a project that deals with the act of walking, strolling and the experience of the path, of wandering, of the itinerary, of pilgrimage as artistic phenomena and experiences.

 

Performance, as a reflection of the contradictions of social life, and the conceptual openness towards the landscape implied by Land Art, as an action and a perspective, made the act of walking a central theme of contemporary art from the nineteen-seventies onwards. Walking is an action that can have many different purposes, intentions and symbolisms, from political resistance to oppression and injustice (marches and demonstrations are, after all, forms of walking), to green mobility initiatives or personal motivations. Its strength lies in its polysemy.

 

This exhibition project aims, on the one hand, to bring together and display the legacy that the CGAC Collection has constructed on the theme of the city, the Way of St. James and the idea of walking and, on the other, to select particularly significant works, artists and projects that have focused on the experience (emotional, ecological, political or landscape) of walking. In recent decades, they have all marked our sensitivity towards walking and also towards its meanings. However, the exhibition is not intended to be encyclopaedic or historical; on the contrary, it intends to encourage the visitor to have a visual experience based on diversity and plurality.

 

To this end, Paths forms a dialogue between a series of artists and projects that have historically marked the ways of visualising walking and the evolution of the idea of the path. In this way, spaces conceived to be visited on foot, such as the Island of Sculptures in Pontevedra or the Open-Air Museum of the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza in Huesca, coexist with more recent proposals by artists belonging to recent generations.

 

The exhibition is divided into two immediately successive chapters, which will occupy the same space in the museum and will function as complementary narratives. It is the same exhibition presented in two stages or, in other words, two exhibitions in one. 

 

Caminos I also features documents and photographs of contemporary art works and projects, borrowed from the archives of Centro de Arte y Naturaleza in Huesca (Fernando Alvira, Javier Campano, Andrés Ferrer, David Nash y Per Kirkeby) and Illa das Esculturas in Pontevedra (Giovanni Anselmo, Fernando Casás, José Pedro Croft, Dan Graham, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jenny Holzer, Leiro, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Anne & Patrick Poirier y Ulrich Rückriem).