Preparatory sketch for the rain in spain falls mainly on the plane

The artist who appropriates and changes the saying “the rain in Spain falls Mainly on the plain”, talks about his work:

‘the rain in spain falls mainly on the plane’  its a popular saying that people from english speaking countries learn through their childhood and often, irish people use it for quickly ‘show off’ their knowledge on iberian meteorology.

This peculiar proverb turns into a connecting bond of my Worlds; on one hand, the lenguage, the anglosaxon culture and the chilidlike content of this saying and, my mother tongue, culture and playfullness caracter of my own work on the other hand.

In 1951, the English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Denis W. Winnicott introduced the concept of transitional object based on a phenomenon commonly observed: early adoption and fiercely possession of children to an object. According to his theory, this object occupies a space between what he calls “inner psychic reality” and “external reality” of the child. Over time, their importance declines and ends up losing meaning for the child. Still, Winnicott argues, what it repressents remains and stays unconsciously present in every one of us. An other  ”transitional phenomenon” occupies the “potential space” between inner subjectivity and external objectivity. This playful space of possibilities is, in fact, the “cultural field.” Within this field the creative behaviour  appears and in the case of my work seems to insist on activate and intermix games, memories, experiments and systems of my own past and present.

All of us have learned to relate to our family environment, material, social and cultural development through play, and play wants to be the common thread of this exhibition. The games presented here are some of those I learned from  TV, -mostly from MacGyver-, from school, from here and there…, but the game more present among them all is the game of the translation of words and cultural references wich  I submit daily.

In parallel, with the sole intention of playing ‘just for the craic‘, the group BlackTulip collaborates in this show with a  NOMIC session , a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for players to change the rules, usually starting with a voting system. The result, a Dadaist and bizarre text worthy of any school playground.

Hoping to be a way of understanding the exhibition from the glimmer of our own childhood … Let’s start connecting the dots.

Vanessa Donoso López

Preparatory sketch for the rain in spain falls mainly on the plane

Preparatory sketches for the rain in spain falls mainly on the plane