MÒNICA PLANES: PILA

Opening of the installation of Mònica Planes at the end of her residency in Bulegoa z/b, during which she led a three-day workshop. Her proposal Hacia con el brazo (MURO) [Towards, with the arm (WALL)] was selected together with Sara Cattin’s Maintenance of What? A place, a thing, an idea. Part III in the 2022 call for residencies. The jury was formed of Isabel de Naverán (researcher, curator, editor and writer), Jorge Satorre (artist) and the members of Bulegoa z/b.

OPENING
Friday, 29 September, 2023, 7.00-9.00 pm

DATES AND HOURS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Saturday, 30 September, 2023. From 12.00 to 2.00 pm
Monday to Wednesday, 2-5 October, 2023. From 5.00 to 8.00 pm

MÒNICA PLANES: PILA
I think about the body’s possibilities of movement and what they depend on. What sets the body in motion? Which is the first part that moves? Where is it headed and how does it change as it moves? To try and answer these questions I want to transfer the way a motor works to the body.

If the sculptural form appears as a result of the relation between the material and the body’s movement, the sculptures can become energy in themselves. Like a fuel, they could have the possibility of releasing that energy and transform themselves, generating more movement: they would be containers that store the potential for action, like a battery or cell. “Pila [Battery] is the search for a motor in the body, not only in a mechanical sense but also in a systemic, contingent and emotional sense.”

WORKSHOP
During my residency at Bulegoa z/b I shared this work process in the form of a workshop that consisted in understanding how the motor functions, collectively embodying this, and then materialising it in the group. The workshop was divided into three sessions: Definition of movements, Experimentation with fuel materials, Sculptural formalisation.

Workshop participants: Andrea Angulo, Miren Bayona, Ane Garai, Hodei Herreros Rodríguez, Alba Mielgo Martin, Gabriel Quiñones, Samuel Ramiro González, Ángela R. Sagredo.

Mònica Planes is interested in the relationship that the body establishes with architecture and the objects that it inhabits and analyses how these elements determine us, affecting our daily behaviour and the relationship we can have with our surroundings. She thinks about how to make sculpture as the materialisation of this relationship, as the fusion of the body in movement with the objects and architectonic structures it comes into contact with.  For that reason, she develops a practice that gives visibility to that relationship between the habitat and the body’s possibilities of movement. The sculpture is an event.

She has presented her work individually in such places as Fundación Suñol, Barcelona (2017); Fundación Arranz-Bravo, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (2018) together with Alejandro Palacín; Centro Cívico Can Felipa, Barcelona (2020); Galería àngels barcelona, Barcelona (2021, Art Nou 2017); Pipistrello, Vulpellac (2021); Gelateria Sognio di Gicchio, Bolonia (2022). She has also taken part in group shows in Halfhouse, Barcelona (2019); Artiatx, Bilbao (2022); Can Felipa Arts Visuals, Barcelona (2022); Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid (2022); TEA, Tenerife (2023) and TBA21 in C3A, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba (2023) and has participated in fairs such as ARCO Madrid.