Tres conceptes buits

In 1978, when Pilar Palomer was part of the first official Spanish participation in the Venice Biennale, she took with her the trunks of eighteen chestnut trees from Montseny, as a metaphor of dead bodies. One year later Palomer created Tres conceptes buits, which also suggests the presence of a body. The artist refers to an object – the chair – with a clear anthropological connotation and a long tradition in conceptual art. Joseph Kosuth himself, as well as Esther Ferrer, have done emblematic works on the subject. In this particular case, Palomer covers over the object, hiding it in such a way that the eye can still identify it. Simultaneously, she also lets us know it is an “empty concept”. In this way she activates a double code of approximation to reality: an objectual code, and a referential one. Nonetheless, the game set up by the artist persists, since the black lines tell us of the position of her body, however absent, in relation to the chair.