Antoni Llena and Lucía C. Pino Two artists in dialogue

The artists from the MACBA Collection, Antoni Llena and Lucía C. Pino, establish a dialogue in an exhibition Panta Rei: Everything Flows. Heraclitus’ thesis about the constant transformation of things and their fragility directly underlies the work of these two artists in the way they turn precarious materials and waste into the subject of their formal research and a warning about the world’s current ecological unsustainability. While Llena uses organic elements such as paper or fabric to observe their transformations, Pino experiments with industrial materials and mechanical and thermal procedures. Thus, while Llena’s objectual landscapes convey a more romantic idea of nature, Pino’s sculptural digressions point at a dystopian landscape where waste is undistinguishable from biology. Far from pure contemplation, the work of both these artists reveals, as Perelló points out, ‘a politicised subject searching for pleasure and political action through aesthetics; a political being aware of living in a collapsed world, yet full of intuitions and suspicions, and a certain amount of hope.’ The exhibition is presented at the Cultural Centre Llibreria Blanquerna, Madrid and curated by Antònia Maria Perelló.