Relational Space Beyond the Institution (LAPIEZA, Madrid 2008–2012)

 

LAPIEZA emerges as a paradigmatic case of early twenty-first-century relational practice in Spain, articulating instability not as a flaw but as a constitutive method. Active between 2008 and 2012 in Madrid’s Malasaña district, the project defined itself as an “instalación relacional inestable,” a mutable constellation of artistic gestures accumulating through time. Rather than aspiring to completion, LAPIEZA functioned as a living archive of actions, objects, and encounters, structured through periodic “mutations.” Each contribution altered the whole, producing a socio-plastic form whose identity was always provisional. In this sense, LAPIEZA aligns with post-Bourriaudian relational aesthetics while simultaneously critiquing its more convivial and depoliticised iterations. 

Crushed Memories and Toxic Affections *The Relational Ecology of SERIE PAN * Decolonial Sequences and the Sociology of Superjunk

 

The SERIE PAN (2010), a pivotal movement within the broader LAPIEZA decolonial exhibition sequence curated by Anto Lloveras, functions as a visceral archive of "emotional residues." This series marks a transition toward a "Superjunk" aesthetic, where the debris of urban consumption—crushed memories, street icons, and industrial leftovers—are reconfigured into portable research units. Spanning 180 series over 15 years, the project treats time as raw material, transforming the act of curating into a form of durational writing. Within SERIE PAN, artworks are not static objects but nodes in a "temporary public," where the contributions of diverse agents like Krapoola, Paula Lloveras, and Tomoto coalesce into a socioplastic landscape of ruins and resurrections. At the core of the series lies the concept of Crushed Memories, where the iconography of the street is appropriated and intervened upon. Using "Superjunk" as a conceptual motor, the artists explore the "second life" of objects—be it the second life of a tree or the tattooing of toast by Hombre U. These works, such as "Tostadas Fuck" and the "Toxic Pan" by Paula Lloveras, utilize organic decay as a metaphor for urban fragility. The concentric progression of mold becomes a poetic and musical project (as seen in the collaboration for the Son-Nús album), where the synergy of voices and visual typography creates a tactile oxidation of the domestic sphere.

The Relational Topology of EL DORADO * Gold as Shared Gesture within the Hipervínculos Network (2013)

EL DORADO represents a radical inversion of the myth of extraction. Conceived in the summer of 2003 upon Lloveras’s return from a six-month immersion in Mexico City, this intervention replaces the colonial fantasy of gold with a "sculpture of survival." The material—a single, ultra-light golden emergency blanket (typically used to shield bodies in distress)—is displaced from its utilitarian context to become a migratory sculptural skin. Weighing only twenty grams, the object functions as a "positional fixator" that is passed from body to body, resisting the static monumentality of traditional art in favor of a shared, performative circulation. This work marks the genesis of a decade-long series of "Light Interventions" (including the white and gray meshes of Provence), where the sculpture is not an addition to the space, but a "rhetorical device" that takes shape through human contact. Within the HIPERVÍNCULOS network, EL DORADO operates as a living loop. Each participant—from Toño Camuñas to Maite Cajaraville—does not receive a copy, but the original object, which is re-sculpted by their posture, mood, and presence. The gold here is not found or stolen; it is offered, creating a temporary fold of care and intimacy in the urban lodazal. Conceptually, the project deconstructs the weight of the artistic link. By using a material so thin it borders on the non-existent, Lloveras proves that "Affection is Fuel." The sculpture is no longer a finished product but a "relational state," a tactile bridge that visualizing the invisible threads of collective agency. In EL DORADO, the value is relocated from the mineral to the gesture, transforming the emergency blanket into a sacred, nomadic archive of the creative community in Madrid.

EL DORADO (Madrid, 2013) constitutes a seminal exploration into the "weight of the bond," manifesting as a migratory socioplastic sculpture that eschews traditional monumentality for a radical, material minimalism. Conceived by Anto Lloveras as an essential node within the broader HIPERVÍNCULOS relational platform, the work utilizes a single, twenty-gram golden emergency blanket that is passed from body to body. This object—charged with the symbolic density of survival and intimacy—is sculpted anew through the specific posture, mood, and presence of each participating artist, including figures such as Maite Cajaraville, Juan Barte, and Monoperro. By deploying a material that is literally and metaphorically "light," Lloveras ensures that the sculpture functions primarily as a gesture, transforming gold from a hidden, extracted myth into a visible, shared "fold of care". The conceptual underpinnings of EL DORADO rely on the inversion of the colonial myth; rather than a sought-after treasure, the "gold" is localized in the city of origin and offered as a temporary relational state. Within the HIPERVÍNCULOS cloud—a network of relational exhibitions and conceptual drifts—the sculpture operates not as a static edition but as a "living rhetorical device". Each artist in the sculptural loop (such as RafaFans, Vic Snake, and Paula Lloveras) is inscribed into a collective imagination where "affection is fuel," displacing the artwork from the physical object into the shared proximity between subjects. This socioplastic approach treats art as an evolving curatorial platform where ephemeral actions and situated sculptures weave together a network of relational states.