Palexco

Thus Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” became “a world for Christina” as something desirable for someone who somehow also remains isolated in another medium.

Chillida’s project for Tindaya became “Eduardo’s space” something that was only in his imagination and that the Palexco building helps to try to understand.

“Across the Universe” has a typical/topical framing of space travel or science fiction cinema and is the only close-up of the building in this series, which was essential due to the assessment of the previous shots. It is also the title of a famous song.

“The Colossus” is reproduced as closely as possible to Francisco Goya’s composition, except that the territory on which Palexco sits is an island. But there are people at the entrance. It was also intended to maintain the enigma. It is not known with what intention and what the gaze of this enormous figure is for. But it is an unequal world.

We are currently living between two glaciations of the planet Earth. Scientists who are studying the causes call this interval an interglacial. It seems to be due to the tilt of the planet’s axis. But every now and then there is a really fast glaciation, like the one they call the Recent Dryas. What would become of the planet and its inhabitants then? With all the scientific and technical advances, could something like this be avoided? The first title of this image “Searching for the light” did not help to explain it, it is true. That’s why we changed it to “Interglacial”. With a single word, if it is explicit, you can investigate.

“Journey into History” ended up being a rather less concrete image than the initial sketch. We simply intended to put a kind of glass galleon stranded on the sand in an unspecified place, at the same height as the Palexco. But then the galleon began to rise, then it stopped being made of glass, and finally there were several galleons fluttering through the air and the Palexco on the ground. What kind of witness to events would that be? Then Palexco also began to fly. Then the sand disappeared and in its place was the sea, in which it was reflected, but that trivialised the scene, made it more “domestic”. In place of the reflection appeared a kind of big hole the size of the Palexco, inside the sea. We went from something banal to something too fantastic. Then we took it for a few walks around A Coruña, we had it on the beach of Riazor and in a couple of other places. But it wasn’t going well. We wanted to talk about history without too many elements, but we were going backwards. Finally we only left the flying galleons, the flying Palexco and the sea, without reflections or holes. We don’t know if History is so inconcrete even with so much data. But we found it exhausting.

“The next morning” was the last in the series and here we wanted to do something special, more Corunyan, more Galician too, with a resemblance to reality, but somewhat dreamlike at the same time. So we put everything in its place, the Palexco, the galleries of the Marina, the Tower of Hercules… We built the dorna and anchored a few of them around Palexco with a light floating on the bow or stern of each one. Well, we also brought the Domus and even the Maritime Control Tower for the left side of the image. We did quite a few sketches. Finally we cleared all the left side where only the sea remained and in the background, in the distance, the ship of Ith, son of Breogan, on his way to Ireland, to conquer it, according to Irish legend.

The congresses are something special, like a mini-boarding school with night-time recreation. Some are extraordinary, some are very entertaining, some are a bit heavy, but in general they are more than interesting. The morning after the first day you already get an idea of what kind of congress it is. And the morning after the last one, you know if you’ve taken a load off your mind or if you’d like it to last a few more days.