Gabriel Ventura

Gabriel Ventura’s multifaceted writing practice has embraced poetry, prose, interviews, narrative fiction, scripts and the epistolary form. The visual and scenic arts have always been central to his thinking and making, whether through the imagery that accompanies his publications or in his collaborations with filmmaker Albert Serra and artists such as Enric Farrés Duran and Rosa Tharrats. His latest poetry collection, Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls (2020)—which lends its title to the present exhibition—is prefaced by a photograph of a statue of Napoleon toppled by the Paris Commune in 1871 and reflects on iconoclasm and the rebellious power of sensory language. True to his belief that poetry is a lived experience, the publication launched with a 24-hour event at which Ventura lived in the window display of the Barcelona bookstore Documenta reading, sharing meals, signing books and debating with journalists, the book’s editors, the proofreader and other artists.