We all have eyes, but not everyone sees in the present tense. Cups of coffee, steam floating above hot plates, dust particles in the air of a room that has spent too much time with its windows closed, or too much time with them open. A person riding an old bicycle to work, the wear and tear telling a story.

There is something in the concept of the everyday, mistakenly dismissed as ‘trivial’. Ignored every night at the end of the day, even though its echoes remain stuck to our skin. In 1947, Henri Lefebvre published a nearly 1000-page tome analyzing daily life: Critique de la vie quotidienne, which became the obsession of his life’s work. In it, Lefebvre questions how the experience of the everyday can be both a source of alienation and a potential for emancipation. It is the latter that the artists in this project explore, perhaps without fully realizing the power embedded in their practices.

All of us, in our quest to make sense of this «life» experience, which is like a parachute jump without a parachute, create a personal mythology. We elaborate, some more skillfully than others, a divine collage of our own history and social ideas that carefully conceals the unbearable meaninglessness of existence. Individuals like Hiroki, P. Morse, or Ichise, however, consciously engage in an extremely powerful act: the veneration of the domestic. A résistance against the constant search for transcendence. These representations of vague and seemingly irrelevant moments are refuges of authenticity where one can stop and rest. Each piece is a silent rebellion against a time that races toward the void. Far from grand narratives, the artists in this project salvage what resists being seen at first glance, in an act of deliberate pause and conscious study, the radical gesture of being present.

Alzueta Gallery presents The Remains of the Day at its Barcelona Turó space, an invitation to linger in the fleeting moments that so often slip by unnoticed. Miho Ichise (Japan, 1989), Hiroki Kawanabe (Japan, 1983), and James P. Morse (USA, 1982) capture in their work the quiet warmth and depth of the everyday—a silent refuge where the authentic is held, where tender details of daily life are preserved. In each gesture—a hand resting in a pocket, a solitary walk, the flight of a bird—these artists remind us that the ordinary is far from trivial. It holds a quiet power, drawing us into our own essence and with the simple act of being present.

04-12-2024 to 10-01-2025

Alzueta Gallery Barcelona Turó

C/ Josep Bertrand, 3
08021 Barcelona

Tel: +34 93 404 16 82
turo@alzuetagallery.com

Monday to Friday 09:00 – 14:00 / 16:00 – 19:00