Carlos Álvarez Las Heras – Gypsy Ballads

26 jun 20208 aug 2020

Til sin udstilling Gypsy Ballads har Carlos Álvarez Las Heras taget udgangspunkt i Federico García Lorcas digtsamling af samme navn (Romancero Gitano, 1928). Samlingens 18 digte har lagt titel og inspiration til udstillingens 18 værker. Álvarez Las Heras skaber tætte forbindelser mellem billedkunsten og litteraturen og beskriver her, hvordan de konkrete strofer har givet materiale til værkernes visuelle udtryk.

Om værket Sleepwalking Ballad (Romance Sonàmbulo), 2020:
This poem is one of the most famous in the Gypsy Ballads. A gypsy, eventually a thief, arrives by boat to the Andalusian coast, where his lover has been waiting for a long time. Riding his horse, he finds her father first. The thief explains to him that, tired of his life, he finally understands that he is looking for a peaceful life of love with his daughter. Sadly, the father answers that his daughter couldn’t wait any longer, and mad with love, killed herself by drowning inside a cistern. Because the name of the poem is Sleepwalking Ballad, we understand that she is dreaming of her fatal destiny over and over again. Therefore, the ballad is actually a dream in itself.

“Green how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out the sea
and the horse on the mountain”

Om værket The Gypsy nun (La Monja Gitana), 2020:
A young gypsy nun is sewing while feeling an uncontrollable passion, that struggles with her forced religious condition. This feeling grows, motivated by the sensuality that she believes to find in different elements that surround her. It is understood that she has been forced to take the vows (probably because of unrequited love, but this is not explained). Therefore, she lives in perpetual internal sorrow.

“through the eyes of the nun,
a pair of horsemen gallop.
a last, muffled murmur
strips her shift an,
gazing on the clouds an mountains
of the listless distance,
her heart of sugar
and verbena breaks”

Om værket The Unfaithful Wife (La Casada Infiel), 2020:
Written in first person, a gypsy explains his meeting by the river with a gypsy girl who initially hides the fact that she is married. The setting, near the river, is reinforced through more imagery; in that sense, nature continues to be a theme of the poem.

“Then I led her to the river
certain she was still a virgin
though she had a husband”

Om kunstneren
Carlos Álvarez Las Heras (León, Spanien, 1982) er uddannet fra Universidad Complutense, Madrid i 2005. Samme år blev han inviteret til at udstille på College of Spain i Paris, hvor han efterfølgende modtog prisen The Medal to Artistic Merit in Plastic Arts. Álvarez Las Heras har bl.a. udstillet på Galería El arte de lo Imposible, Gijón, ARCO, Madrid og Revellin Museum, Ceuta. Han har som kommissioner udført et vægmaleri til byen León og udsmykket Madrid-Barajas Lufthavn.

Kilde: Galleri Tom Christoffersen