Between Quotation Marks, a social sculpture conceived by Anto Lloveras in Madrid, 2012, operates at the intersection of spatial memory, performative portraiture and sculptural semiotics, transforming the domestic wall of the artist’s live-in gallery into a site of dialogic engagement. The black, three-dimensional quotation marks — simultaneously comic, grotesque and mute — suspend the portrayed guests within a rhetorical parenthesis, suggesting that their very presence constitutes a statement in and of itself. This gesture extends Joseph Beuys’ notion of the “social sculpture”, reframing the individual not only as subject but as a material element within a relational aesthetic. The installation is grounded in Lloveras’s own lived environment, a space layered with years of artistic practice, where editing, reading, drawing and receiving visitors coexisted in a rhythm of creative domesticity. The mural becomes a palimpsest, retaining traces of earlier sketches, phone calls and artistic gestures, now punctuated by the performative act of posing. By inviting artists, poets and musicians — including Elise Plain, Susan Campos, Monoperro and Yanira — to participate, Lloveras initiates a choreography of stillness, where each image acts as both documentation and sculpture. The work stages the threshold between private and public, interior and exterior, author and subject, highlighting the porous nature of authorship in collaborative or participatory frameworks. At once tender and conceptual, Between Quotation Marks critiques the spectacle of representation by literalising the framing device — the quotation — as a sculptural presence, invoking questions about voice, authorship and the performativity of the portrait in contemporary art practice.
Trabajé durante años junto a este muro. Lo pinté de blanco en 2008, cuando comencé a vivir en la galería de la calle Palma, al dejar CAMAROTE. En esta habitación trabajaba alternativamamente sentado (editando), tumbado (leyendo documentos) y de pie, dibujando y escaneando. Tenía teléfono fijo, y los amigos y clientes me llamaban en el día, sabían que estaba. En la tarde, más allá del muro de carga, reorganizaba la obra, y recibía a los visitantes, ávidos de arte fresco. Para la acción de clausura en 2012, elegí el muro, con restos de gráficas, junto con las ligeras comillas, para la sesión de fotos, la escultura social, con algunos invitados.
PHOTOS BARTE
