Paisaje y memoria / Memory & landscape. Alicia Chillida

Landscape has traditionally been the genre for the representation of human space, both real and imagined, both natural and constructed; a genre so imbricated in the classical tradition is revealed in recent years in one of the most fertile fields of research in contemporary art today. The exhibition Landscape and memory brings together a selection of new forms of interpretation of landscape offered by photographers, video artists and filmmakers from the 1960s to the present day, and offers the viewer a varied yet unified whole. The semantic enrichment of landscape in contemporary art is one of the attractions of the exhibition and the way in which the artists establish a continuity with a classic theme such as landscape invites us to reflect on the evolution of the History of Art, in constant renewal without avoiding looking back to the past.

The exhibition is organized in two different levels, outlining a route directed to the area called "Hill of Sciences": the interior level, developed in La Casa Encendida, and the exterior level projected towards the city. The creation of an interdisciplinary debate constitutes the body of the book or catalog, with contributions from Iñaki Ábalos, architect and professor at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid in the Cátedra de Paisaje; Rafael Bachiller, astronomer and director of the Real Observatorio Astronómico Nacional; John Berger, novelist, storyteller, poet, screenwriter and art critic; Beatriz Blanco, poet and architect-urbanist; Christine Buci-Glucksmann, philosopher and specialist in contemporary art; and Teresa Galí, agronomist and landscape engineer.

In parallel to the exhibition, also taking place at La Casa Encendida, with free access, is a cycle of film and video directed by Beatriz Navas, in which the landscape is projected as a journey to the roots through the body in the performances of Ana Mendieta, filmed in super 8; the journey as a personal game in the road moovie of Sophie Calle or the journey to death through the Iranian desert in The taste of ashes by Abbas Kierostami.

In 2005 this exhibition travels to CAAM and in this fertile encounter with its permanent collection, the forty-three artists are joined by names such as Richard Ross, Olafur Eliasson, Miguel Río Branco, Carlos Schwartz, Gilberto & Jorge and Magnolia Soto.

The enigma of personal memory and the tracing of the collective memory in Alice and the Cities Wim Wenders or the sensation that time does not exist in the relationship of a son with his dying mother in Mother and child Sokurov's films, where feelings are expressed by the beautiful and overwhelming nature that surrounds them. Feelings expressed verbally in Godard's films, true cinematic essays on human nature and its place in the world.

Stories that speak of thoughts and experiences that remain impregnated in the earth, traces and silhouettes that are drawn in time and remain in the memory. The cinema highlights and represents these experiences as in Sans Soleil by Chris Marker, which meditates on the dreams of humanity in an imaginative journey through universal territory.

It is worth mentioning the importance of the fact that the exhibition extends its limits to two of the great buildings constructed by Juan de Villanueva in the 18th century in the "Eje del Prado", which constitute Madrid's first urban landscape essay. The collaboration of María Teresa Tellería, Director of the Royal Botanical Garden and Rafael Bachiller, Director of the Royal Astronomical Observatory of Madrid in the production of specific works by Spanish artists Lara Almarcegui, Mireya Masó and Montserrat Soto for La Casa Encendida has been essential. The exhibition as a whole shows an overview of the latest international creation in video, photography and film that at the same time helps to deepen on a classic theme and contributes to re-know the landscape and history of the city of Madrid.