I have walked by the Centro del Carmen, a museum & cultural center, a thousand times but never bothered actually going inside. How silly of me — especially when most of the exhibits are free of charge.
First off, the Centro del Carmen is a beautiful building complex which by itself is worth a visit. The garden inside seems straight from a fairy tale:
When we went, they had two exhibitions – Let’s start off with the exhibit of José Benlliure y Gil a Valencia-born painter:
This image must have been from some kind of Valencian Procession. The throwing of rose petals gave it away.
I really enjoyed this exhibit – the paintings looked very realistic and full of life and I especially like that most of them were from various Valencian Festivals. So yes, I would hang up a Jose Benlluire y Gil in my living room.
The next exhibition was the Observatori 2008 – we had read about it and wanted to go anyways.
With the title After the Net, the Festival Observatori 2008 sees cutting-edge trends brought to Valencia by the most significant Spanish and International creators. In the field of research into sound, we have the 0.5 programme, which investigates the intricate worlds of sound, noise and silence from different social and scientific points of view.
José Antonio Orts, whose interactive sculptures react to the spectators with changes in light and sound. No less interesting is Antisocial notworking, and on-line store of projects that explore the role of social networking sites, as well as the special selection of on-line projects contained in the work open.KURATOR.
Source: Comunitat Valenciana
Quite a contrast to the exhibit before.
My favorite installation was called Chatroom which takes photographs & videos of you while standing in front of this set up:
To produce and project this:
FUN – I could have spent hours playing around with it.
Here are some audio installations, playing mind games with you:
Plotter art and 2 images of the venue:
I had a blast. The only problem was that sometimes it was hard to figure out if you were allowed to touch the art or not. I managed to get yelled at couple of times.
There 4 live performances this weekend:
21.06. 17h and 19h – Marc Zeier and Jacob Kirkegaard
22.06. 17h and 19h – Thanasis Kaproulias and Chop Shop
Admission: €3