Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.
In this exhibition in one scene, artist Alvaro Urbano (Madrid, 1983) uses as a case study the celebrated Hexagon Pavilion, designed by architects José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún. The building, now languishing in a ruinous state in Madrid’s Casa de Campo park, was first presented as the Spanish Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair and is considered an important example of modern Spanish architecture. After years of abandonment, it is hard to believe what it once was and what it contained.
Here—where the architecture and vegetation seem to be frozen in time, where the building itself holds a pictorial and sonic landscape that speaks of the past experiences lived within its walls, and where a pair of raccoons intermittently dwells—an endless twilight bathes the space in color and brings it to life.
Like an unscripted film that captures daily existence, The Awakening constructs a parallel life for an exhausted building in order to revive seemingly dormant histories.
SYNOPSIS Like a strange dream that seems to go on forever, The Awakening reanimates a building whose life appears to have expired long ago. Through an immersive installation comprised of fragments that make up the body of a building, a forgotten edifice is reactivated to provoke speculative thought about its past and future. In this exhibition in one scene, artist Alvaro Urbano (Madrid, 1983) uses as a case study the celebrated Hexagon Pavilion, designed by architects José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún. The building, now languishing in a ruinous state in Madrid’s Casa de Campo park, was first presented as the Spanish Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair and is considered an important example of modern Spanish architecture. After years of abandonment, it is hard to believe what it once was and what it contained. Here—where the architecture and vegetation seem to be frozen in time, where the building itself holds a pictorial and sonic landscape that speaks of the past experiences lived within its walls, and where a pair of raccoons intermittently dwells—an endless twilight bathes the space in color and brings it to life. Like an unscripted film that captures daily existence, The Awakening constructs a parallel life for an exhausted building in order to revive seemingly dormant histories. CONTEXT The year is 1958 and the city is Brussels. It’s the first World’s Fair to be held after World War II. At this international gathering, the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs are celebrated under the slogan “A world for a better life for mankind.” The highlights of Expo 58 include the Atomium by engineer André Waterkeyn and architects André and Jean Polak, which resembles a gigantic iron crystal; and the Philips Pavilion, designed by Le Corbusier in collaboration with Iannis Xenakis, which resounds the music of Edgar Varèse’s Poème électronique. Spain, though still a dictatorship, sends a proposal with an avant-garde architectural language: a prefabricated construction system that adapts to the terrain and can expand or shrink as needed. Known as the Hexagon Pavilion, the building’s structure, designed by architects José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún, can be dismantled (as specified in the open call for ideas issued by Spain’s Interministerial Committee). Several ideas about what to present inside its walls are rejected, including proposals to leave it as an empty building or to showcase a conceptual exhibition featuring only Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s drawings of neurons, a bullfighter’s cape, and an orange. The Hexagon Pavilion’s unique architecture wins the Gold Medal at Expo 58. After being presented in Brussels it is moved to the Casa de Campo park in Madrid. During its first years there, it houses the Ministry of Agriculture, and from 1967-1975 it serves as the headquarters of the Commission for the Agricultural Fair. Afterward, like other structures in that section of the Casa de Campo, the famous Hexagon Pavilion is abandoned and sinks into a ruinous state.
SINGLE SCENE (INFINITE) Note on the setting: A bright twilight fills the scene with a mustard-colored hue, a mixture of yellow and green with a hint of blue. A heavy, persistent fog hovers close to the floor and slowly rises, making it hard to see far away. The atmosphere is mysterious and almost gloomy. The feeling it inspires is closer to a contemplative state of mind than to the notion of a specific time of day.
The scene opens with a group of hexagonal umbrellas sprouting from the ground. We are inside the Hexagon Pavilion, the brainchild of architects Corrales and Vázquez Molezún. Its canopies emit a light that is constantly moving and seems to breathe. Soon, the camera lens pans, and its angle gently widens. It becomes clear that this place is not the renowned pavilion, but rather an abstraction of it. As the camera continues to move, in the distance we begin to glimpse other fragments of the architecture, as well as wild shrubs and a few other things, though it’s hard to make out what else is there. We see brick walls but they seem to be mere outlines, almost like line drawings suspended in mid-air. The camera zooms in on the umbrellas again and, in this close-up, we see that their bases are rotting and rusted. A closer inspection of their materiality reveals that they are made of paper with detailed painting. This is a clue that the setting is a stage, a representation of reality. But it might also be the building’s parallel life. We press on. The camera continues its slow, steady movement. We move through the corridors under the mustard-colored light, which makes it hard to see clearly. A distant sound of breathing indicates that this architectural structure—which appears to be in another dimension, in a kind of limbo—is still alive. There is a hole in the wall. Could the Hexagon Pavilion, the one presented in Brussels in 1958, be there, on the other side of the hole? Or is it the derelict structure sitting in the Casa de Campo? We can’t see far enough to tell. The camera turns. A pair of raccoons appear in the background. They don’t seem to realize that anyone else is there. They go about their business, eating whatever they find, sniffing the shrubs, and moving swiftly through the space. They constantly move in and out of the frame. We go back to the beginning. In this scene, there are no main characters. It’s impossible to tell what season it is, much less what year. There are dead leaves on the ground. Perhaps it’s autumn. Perhaps it’s a sign of the building’s neglect. There are cigarette butts, rotting oranges, and weeds growing wild. If we look closely, we see that the cigarettes and the plants are made of metal, and the oranges of cement. They are painstakingly painted to capture a specific moment. There is a rhythm to what happens here. A string of sounds that never seem to be repeated flow and synchronize with the apparent breathing of the light. We can identify the sources of some sounds but others hark back to ancient times: blowing wind, falling leaves, chirping insects, spilling water. We hear melodies inspired by Noches en los jardines de España [Nights in the Gardens of Spain], by the great Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, whose music was never played inside the Hexagon Pavilion. The idea was suggested for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, but the selecting committee rejected it. These and many other invisible elements reflect events that happened, may have happened, or will happen inside the building—events now stored within it as memories inscribed onto its architecture. What we don’t know is precisely which stories the building is trying to tell, or who is telling them. Is it the ghost of the pavilion? The ghosts of those who experienced it? Or the spirits of those who will inhabit it in a possible future? The scene of this dystopian dawn, where the pavilion seems to awaken from what was assumed to be a permanent sleep, goes on indefinitely.
– José Esparza Chong Cuy
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: El despertar, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2020. Photo: Arturo Laso.