Just like nature, art never ceases to amaze me. And this time, with what I’m sharing with you today, the surprise has been immense. I rarely get to see an exhibition consisting mainly of wooden sculptures, so when I entered the galleries I was truly in awe.

Although I didn’t immediately grasp what the exhibition was about, I could see many objects, in various shapes, made of wood, and I know that this material is not easy to work with; it requires not only skill and experience, but also a great deal of material.

The artist is José de la Calle, and to be honest, in the two galleries where his works were on display, there were so many, too many to count, most of them in display cases, others on a table, and others on the floor. When I went back to look at the number of photographs I’d taken, I decided to split the topic into two parts, and today I’ll be presenting the first room to you; I also have an anecdote to share that’s never happened to me before.

The works weren’t titled, that caught my attention, but each one did have a number. I found a QR code on the wall, supposedly to take you to the website, but when I tried to access the exhibition today, it was no longer there, as the exhibition had ended. But that doesn’t worry me; you’ll see why.

The exhibition is called “Everything is sculpture, everything is a poem” and ran until 9 July at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País in Málaga. This is a place that never ceases to amaze me, and this was no exception.

As well as wood, the artist has used other materials, but it is the way the wood has been worked that amazes me most; in most of the pieces, the grain of the wood is clearly visible.

Of course, I didn’t understand most of the pieces on display; many of them seemed to convey a message but were somewhat abstract, whilst others were quite clear, such as the shoe lasts and eggs. You might think that what was on display all seemed rather random or like a jumble of meaningless things. I thought exactly the same.

But actually, I want to focus on how they’re made and the perfection—for example, in those featuring geometric shapes, in 3D of course, but executed perfectly, where you can see cubes, spheres, those shoe lasts I mentioned, eggs and hands.

Some pieces looked like tools; others, for example, held a pendulum; and the ones I liked best were those with an eye, even if it was small, and, of course, my favourite is the one that really is an eye, although if you look at it from a distance it doesn’t appear to be. Even on the walls there were pieces made of wood with flawless finishes.

There were some very evocative pieces, and others that I didn’t understand, at least, I didn’t, but that doesn’t detract from the value of their creation.

A friend came with me to the exhibition, and what we did was stand in front of each piece and try to guess what it might be. After a while, we spotted what looked like a seal, but it turned out to be a squirrel, so I think the interpretation is left to the viewer’s discretion.

As I mentioned, the materials used were varied: mainly wood, but also metal, plastic, stone, aluminium, enamels, other paints and much more.

The question posed by this exhibition is: What is art? Taking into account the boundaries that may have been drawn throughout history and how to distinguish it from any other product of human ingenuity.

For the artist, the artistic act is the realisation of being alive. According to him, its function is to remove masks of all kinds, social, religious, traditional, in order to discover unity in everything. A message of unity, love and poetry, building utopias in every work. For him, every work, every sculpture, was poetry.

Of course there are more works, but the anecdote, which I’ll share with you next time, is that whilst my friend and I were trying to guess what each piece was, the gallery manager came over to give us an information leaflet listing the name of each work, the materials used to create them, and details about the artist. He waited until the tourists had left and then handed it to us. I’ve been going to that gallery for years and I really appreciate his thoughtfulness.

Thank you all very much for joining me today; I hope you have a lovely Sunday. See you soon.
Amonet.

All photographs are my own.