Brightly colored waxy oranges half-peeled, showing their glossy flesh. Imperial oranges with muted and dark tones, keeping company with lobsters, partridges, and bunches of grapes. Pink grapefruits, yellow grapefruits, green grapefruits. Lemons of blinding yellow and transparent flesh.
Citrus, those fruits that centuries ago were exotic in certain latitudes, since they only flourished in well-tempered greenhouses, are essential in the history of art and still life. It is not for nothing that orange gives its name to one of the longest-lived monarchies in history, the Oranje-Nassau.
But the exhibition that we are about to break off has nothing to do with those still lifes by Cornelis de Heem, Peter Claesz, Tomás Yepes, Juan Sánchez Cotán or the wonderful Clara Peeters. Or the most up-to-date by contemporary artists
Some of the most established, and at the same time brave, artists of 2023 exhibit their work at the Elba Benítez gallery in Madrid with works that have citrus fruits as their main, tangential or almost invisible motif. The exhibition is like a giant orange juice that one drinks almost in one gulp: it ends soon, it will only have two weeks to live, but it is intense and energetic.
Vitamin C and artistic antioxidants. The 14 creators exhibit their work with the aim of raising funds for the Citrus Foundation, led by the renowned art curator Vicent Todolí, which is an open-air "museum" of 480 citrus species: 50,000 square meters scented with orange blossom. A garden of the Hesperides of the 21st century.
All the participating artists have crossed their vital and creative trajectories with the former director of the Tate, among other positions. Todolí (born in Palmera, Valencia, 1956) is a kind of Rome: all roads have led to him for four decades.
The list couldn't be tastier. Tacita Dean, who has passed through these pages, and who is the only artist in history (man or woman) to have exhibited at the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy in London at the same time.
Nan Goldin, protagonist of one of the most powerful film works of recent times, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Golden Lion in Venice. Cristina Iglesias, who is also a friend of these pages, and who presents a drawing of a wasteland irrigated by a river or a ditch or perhaps it is a mirage or a miracle of so little rain nowadays.
The exhibition, which can be seen that opened on the 15th and can be seen until April 29 at the headquarters of the gallery on Calle San Lorenzo in Madrid, has been coordinated by Lucía Muñoz Iglesias and is a compendium of small artistic gems. Mirosław Bałka photographs a lemon that looks like a lemon, but also the breast of a woman or a hornet's nest.
The photograph of Tacita Dean is one of those that anyone would like to have on the wall of their house, a painted postcard with an image of boxes of lemons and a message: “Help yourself”. A Californian print, the land where the British artist lives.
Photographer and documentarian Paul Graham photographs a lady on her way to old age. A portrait that speaks of the cycle of life and that connects with many citrus trees: they have fruit and at the same time they are blossoming for a new harvest.
Painter of indecipherable landscapes, Julie Mehretu, the influential 52-year-old Ethiopian-American artist, joins this acid and generous party with a drawing that gives rise to the imagination, which speaks of the force of nature, of how calm it is he stayed when we had to confine ourselves at home.
Yes, they no longer remember that, but it hasn't been that long either. Goldin portrays a boy who does not eat any citrus, but does eat a bunch of grapes, one of the fruits that the 17th century masters adored for their still lifes.
The Catalan Antoni Muntadas becomes a living drone, an Icarus and portrays from the heights a considerable expanse of fruit trees in effect, it is the jade green paradise that is the Hort Bartolí, Todolí's own citrus museum.
And the American artist and writer Roni Horn challenges himself with a word game in a kind of tongue twister drawing with different colored pencils. As if the Fundació Tàpies' Núvol i Cadira were phrases, each with a different tone. Like a flowering vine.
Carsten Holler, Ragnar Kjartarson, Cildo Meireles, Matt Mullican, Philippe Parreno or Julião Sarmiento complete a juicy list of artists who present their works in boxes that include a variety of formats, including photography, prints and monotypes. Olive green boxes that contain all the works. In total there are 17 cases plus another 15 of Author Tests. The exhibition (open until the 29th) awakens all the senses and is equivalent to a ticket to childhood, freshness and a slightly greener and cleaner future, if the sky and the rain allow it.
