"GAMES OF THE SOUL". ARTURO PRINS

 

 

 

As an adult I had a dream. I was in a room in a Chinese Palace. It was an unrepeatable place, a child's playroom. And for this reason I want to take you to this magical, warm place, where possibilities live. I want to take you to the space of the soul, a seed from which all things are born and where all the opportunities to play, hit, or lose are hidden. It is an electrifying place. There dwell all desires, aspirations, efforts; Fantasy palace. It is a place without time, there is a radiant present. What lives in this room are the games of life, the toys of the soul. Tales of memory, secret belongings of life, its history and content, a palace of the Beginnings. Memories of colors, fascicles of fragrances, clocks of love, toy architectures, fountains drawn with diamond water, chariots of light, abstract inventions, rainbow pennants, beacons of enthusiasm, words of power, wheels of fire, diamond ships, drawn thoughts, birth of stars, ether files, essences of intelligence. Careful! There is so much concentrate that, it will be inevitable, you are going to get dizzy.

 

In Juegos del alma, all my work will be wrapped in gift paper. At the inauguration I would like the audience to take an active part playing to assemble my works and build a visual library. May the space become a colorful jungle, an abstract and figurative room. At the indicated time all of you can open a work… and play; choose the wall where each one thinks best to hang it and open a window in the paper jungle. You don't need to check with me. Together we will set up the exhibition and invent the Games of the Soul. Music composed especially for this occasion by Santiago Talavera, will enliven and excite this meeting._cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Everyone will be able to have hammers and nails to mount drawings, paintings and photographs as they see fit. I hope you play hard and have fun!

 

Each work has a history and an origin. Each one will carry the detailed review, and its legend. Why did the soul choose to play with this or that form, why did it fall in love or obsess over others. The tales of my Soul, stored in this palace of visions. Visual gifts, uncertain in some cases, safe in others... all in the protection of a warm place where the soul learns by playing, where it is right and wrong, where the heart works patiently and carefully until it knows what it should and can create...

 

Los Juegos del Alma act by stimulating the creativity of the spectator who will participate in the inauguration mounting the artist's work. The paintings will be wrapped and hidden because every work hides a mystery that the viewer slowly reveals. Understanding it and locating it in a complex space, bonding with the rest of those present. Opening a painting or uncovering it is a symbol of approaching art, of searching and of a direct encounter between the work and the one who contemplates it. Museums prevent us from touching the works, from getting too close. An unnecessary taboo. I want the painting to become a delicate object in the hands of those who attend this meeting. Let them touch, smell and discover a painting, a drawing and mount it on a wall; a direct and committed dialogue with the work.

 

The wrapping paper represents the gift, the surprise, the enthusiasm that something awaits us and we are going to like it. I choose this  paper as my personal interpretation of Sino-Tibetan palaces and monasteries. Completely lining the interior of a gallery is what brings me closer to colour, baroque style, and the saturation that prevails in the interior decoration of these temples and architectures. In them the senses overflow, with incense, sounds and songs, aromas and perfumes but above all the sight, plaguing their spaces with canvases, fabrics, mural paintings, prayer scrolls, musical instruments, writings and sculptures. I try to steer clear  of religious references. With the wrapping paper I visually synthesize the dream that inspired me, Games of the Soul; the room of a Chinese palace, a place full of painted drawings, foliage , filigrees, walls of flowers, geometric planes and wonderful objects, many of which  are recreated in the fantasies of my paintings and drawings.

 

The Games of the Soul do not differ from the games of life. I understand that when I sing, my soul sings, when I think, my soul thinks, that when I love, she does too. That working, winning, losing, enjoying, growing, manifesting and dying is part of a gigantic game; that we use the game as a learning element. We rediscover the universe, like children, who by building a building with Lego or painting themselves as a woman, learn to understand the world of adults, to reveal it. As long as the game exists, we will enjoy and suffer the spectacle of life. Everything will constantly turn, like a wheel, where the soul will play in it, learning to recognize itself and know who it is since it has come.

 

My work is understood from  multiple visual registers. There is the variety that is born from an exaggerated curiosity to open closed doors and discover new ways of painting, a lack of commitment to style, adding a very clear need to transfer my life to the works: my hopes, my searches, falling in love, my games, frustrations and whims. These contrasts build this room o Alma of my creations, his particular album.

 

Logically, the assembly that we will do together can end in a chaotic, mediocre or brilliant way; it essentially depends on our ability to accept 'The Others' and to play with them, as well as to accommodate the aesthetic differences of my works. I learn by playing with others, because I educate myself to live together, because I live with the differences that live in me, I want to discover and understand others. Because there are some rules of the game, which speak of the dialogue between spectators and artists, otherwise, we will play alone, and... who has fun playing alone?

 

The gallery will become the space where my dreams appear, the images that have constituted my idea of the search, of the immensity of the future, what remains to be gained, meditations and dreams recorded in diaries, lights and shadows._cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_Games of the soul, games of life. A bridge down, up: a reflection of the room of my heart. A portrait of that magical room in which I would like to take refuge and rest, a balm against time and pain. The place from One, where I choose myself, and design myself. An authentic living room of vital games. A small palace that keeps as a visual library, my vision of the universe.

In my openings I have always believed in the importance of music, which is why I commissioned Santiago Talavera, a young and very promising composer, to write a piece for Juegos Del Alma, which will bear the same name as the exhibition and It will last approximately 20 minutes. This musical work aims to stimulate and incite the meeting in this assembly of spectators and artists, where the assembly builds the group soul. It is a reflection of what happens in the montage, a music that contains various melodies or highly differentiated compartments within it. A positive, warm, deep, banal, fun, tribal, religious music and above all a music that seeks to find and take away new sounds; invoke the Soul. It will be possible to listen to it in the gallery throughout the month as well as to purchase a CD of this recorded theme.

 

The legends of the paintings are only written in the great museums. In Juegos del Alma, I want to make public the privacy of my paintings, show the reason for each one and the impression of the state I was in when making them. Legends, that each spectator, when unwrapping the painting, will be able to read and place next to it. It is a way of adding a lot of information about the work, and its creative process, and its links with my real life.

 

This is our recreational space, and anything can happen there, the human and the cursed... the final assembly is yours and its result can be seen throughout the month of exhibition. That is why I want you to feel that we are going back to childhood, where we all played together and each one assumed their game with enthusiasm, with interest, throwing themselves completely into their role, building their imagination, believing in it, ultimately discovering our great little world.

 

All these paintings symbolize the moments of my last three years in an uneven way. They recreate my thoughts and emotions. They are paintings from a near and far place, which ignite my enthusiasm in each new trip, discovering the son of each image. A surprise, to conceive that art can build a more graceful, warmer, deeper, close and generous world. That is why I want us to do it together, the result does not matter but the certainty that it is with you.

An approach to all those who have the power to move the soul and spirit, to create a field of ideas.

 

 Arturo Prins.
Games of the Soul- April 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

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