Escala 1:1 | Isidoro Valcárcel Medina from the inside

Reviewed in all the cultural supplements across the country, the exhibition that Isidoro Valcárcel Medina and Juan de Nieves have designed for the space of the Adhoc gallery in Vigo leaves amongst other things a site-specific life size intervention.

Escala 1:1 (Scale 1:1) inevitably evokes the map that Lewis Carroll mentions in Sylvia and Bruno, that one that was never spread out due to the objections of the farmers. About when farmers objected and when the objections had an effect.

If Valcárcel Medina is anything within Spanish art, it is transparency and life-size. There is no over dimensioning and what’s more he currently seems to occupy the place that corresponds to him.

Escala 1:1 takes the exact measure of the exhibition space and that this becomes the work of art. It’s about explaining nothing more than what is there, hence the space has been left empty and it is left to its dimensions to explain something to us. It’s curious that this minimal action opens so many paths for reflection and that subjects like emptiness, dealt with on other occasions, once again provoke such interest. To do so, the ground of the lower floor has been lined in tracing paper with lines and words annotated by hand. It’s a large sculpture, which we gain access to from the inside, which marks this limit between what is public, and what is private.

This exhibition will remain open until 31 January and it’s well worth a visit because it pleases in its just measure, established when something hits just the right spot. So now we use the country itself, as its own map and I can assure you it functions almost as well.