In any scenario of uncertainty, art, like other fields of knowledge and practice, is called upon to respond to the old but ever-renewed urgency of standing at the height of events. Whatever that may mean: perhaps to understand them and respond with commitment. Curiously, from the perspective of artistic practice, more interesting than that abstract height, which is no more than a regulating idea, might be height as a dimensional extension of space: that which is concrete and capable of being measurable.

It was thanks to such height that Eratosthenes of Cyrene was able to calculate, with surprising accuracy, the circumference of the Earth over two thousand years ago, by observing the dance of shadows during the summer solstice. In his map of the known world, the Earth appears as a heavy creature, a sluggish animal whose body is traversed by rivers, pierced by seas and surrounded by oceans. It is an early representation of the world as an island. This exhibition brings together aesthetic approaches to geography through the work of Julià Panadès, Laia Ventayol and Mar Guerrero.

Julià Panadès creates his own measuring rods to measure the world on the beach, with the remains of our collective shipwreck: the debris of the Anthropocene. Material traces of human presence in natural environments, waste and rubbish become creative matter for an artist who carries out an attentive observation of his geographical and social context. Through this process, he generates slender totems of a strange beauty whose fragility and precarious balance is a vivid reflection of our own situation and relationship with a contradictory present.

Laia Ventayol surveys the horizon of new landscapes with curiosity and measures its expansion with that of her own body, which appears in her actions linked to personal or collective memory. Her work, often developed through collaborative strategies, investigates the set of relationships that people establish with their surroundings in productive activities that depend on water. At times, she invites us to look for it in an animal connection with the territory, as in the case of the dowsers who scour the land in search of underground wells.

In her latest projects, Mar Guerrero, who develops her practice at an interesting crossroads between art and astronomy, investigates the symbolism of the sphere in a broad sense, placing it in inhospitable places and obsessively tracing its contours in installations that are configured as habitats and celestial maps. Physical and symbolic correlates emerge in the gesture of inverting the telescope. In doing so, the artist raises about the extension of those territories still unknown.

Can artistic practice be, as was Eratosthenes’ experiment, that which serves us to establish new visions of the world? Perhaps we can also learn to measure geography with what we have at hand: to (re)discover new territory, explore the extension of the landscape, draw the shifting cartography of the present. To measure, ultimately, not to make the world finite, but to imagine together other ways of being in it.

Julià Panadès (Ses Salines, Mallorca, 1981). Graduated in Design, Illustration and Animation in Barcelona.

He has participated in group exhibitions in Madrid, Amsterdam, Helsinki, London, Berlin, Bogotá, Paris and Milan. He has had solo exhibitions at the Fran Reus Gallery (Palma), Addaya Contemporary Art Centre (Mallorca), Alegría Gallery (Barcelona), Centro Párraga (Murcia), Museu de Porreres and Studio Weil (Port d’Andratx). He has held group exhibitions in Es Baluard Contemporary Art Museum in Palma, in Espai La Rambleta (Valencia), in the CCCC Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània in Valencia, in Tabakalera Donosti or in the MACE (Ibiza). He has been selected for various competitions, including the Ciutat de Palma Prize and the JustMad Prize. He has also won the “Art for Change” Award from Studio Weil.

His work has been awarded in the mediation grants of the CAC of Palma and in the Creation projects of the IEB. He was selected to represent the Balearic Islands’ stand at ARCO 2023. He was also a resident at the BilbaoArte Foundation and Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture. He is founder and manager of TACA, a contemporary culture space in Palma.

Laia Ventayol-García (Artá, Mallorca, 1984) is a visual artist. She currently lives in Palma, works at the Universitat de les Illes Balears and previously studied in Germany, at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg, the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe and the Kunstakademie Münster. In her research, she uses different media such as video, performance, installation and conversation. On a conceptual level, she is interested in the exchange of knowledge and affects, as well as in collective work.

She has participated in several group exhibitions, held at Fabra i Coats Barcelona (2024), Casal Solleric in Palma (2023), Dilalica in Barcelona (2023), Seoul Museum of Art Nanji Exhibition Hall (2022), Centre Arbar in Vall de Santa Creu (2021), and the Loop Festival in Barcelona (2021). Solo exhibitions include those held at the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Palma (2024) and at the Galeria Maior in Pollença (2023). As duo exhibitions, the one with Jieun Kim at Ausstellungshalle AdbK Nürnberg (2023) and with Cristina Moreno García at Edel Extra Nürnberg (2018) stand out.

Among other awards, Ventayol has received the Goethe Institute artist residency at Casa Planas (2024), the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg (Debütantenförderung, 2023), the artist residency grant from the Sant Andreu Contemporani programme in Barcelona (2023), the Barcelona Crea grant (2023) and the Seoul Museum of Art artist residency grant for international artists (2022).

Mar Guerrero (Palma, 1991). Graduated in Fine Arts at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (2014), she subsequently studied a master’s degree in Artistic Production at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (2016). Since 2024 she is working on her PhD in Cognition and Human Evolution at the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB).

She has had solo and group exhibitions at Galería Formato Cómodo (Madrid), Galería Juan Silió (Madrid), Dilalica (Barcelona), Fundación Juan March (Palma), Casal Solleric (Palma), Fundación Chirivella Soriano (Valencia), Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània (Valencia), Fundación Vila Casas (Barcelona), MAMT (Tarragona) and Conde Duque (Madrid), among others. She has participated in artist residencies at Matadero (Madrid, 2017), Nirox Foundation (Johannesburg, 2017), SÍM (Iceland, 2019), Orbital (Santander, 2019), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada, 2020), La Wayaka Current (Atacama, 2022), Belgrade AIR (Belgrade, 2023) and Studio Weil (New York, 2024).

She has been awarded the Pilar Juncosa and Sotheby’s Awards and Grants 2020, the InJuve Grants for Young Creation 2021/2022, VEGAP Visual Creation Grants 2023, Generations 2023 from La Casa Encendida and Fundación Montemadrid, as well as the Barbara H. Weil Award 2023 and the Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics Grants 2024.

Medir la geografía: nuevos territorios