Nordés
Art Gallery

Ernst Mach’s objection to the horizon line (of Events), is the first individual exhibition in NORDÉS of the artist Rubén Ramos Balsa (Santiago de Compostela, 1978; resident in Singapore) where he presents for the first time a small part of the Librarian that is, In his own words, his most important and extensive life project, also his most personal and intimate.

The Librarian is defined “as boxes and suitcases with objects and books.” It is a project where the artist maintains active his constant research work that, in general, deals with various topics from the privileged approach that allows the dual vision of art and science. The Librarian is a project between the literary and the sculptural, between the graphic and the geometric.

The theme and central motif of this exhibition, also the reason for the creation of the Librarian as a research structure, is the discovery of the Senegalese Oumar Haidara Fall, with whom he has been collaborating since 2006.

This exhibition shows his last four works in photographic format accompanied by previous ones that the author has selected as a link to the thematic continuity of his work: unity, repetition and symmetry. With them he creates a visual narrative in dialogue with his new series of drawings, through which he presents the guiding line of the exhibition’s theme. A poetic relationship is built between images and drawings, defined through titles developed over years, which are for the artist the main material for the ideation of his work and the founding basis of the Librarian.

The deep conceptual relationships between art and science that Rubén Ramos usually shows appear in the works in this exhibition defined in what he declares as his only intellectual objective: to demonstrate the validity and relevance of Ernst Mach’s objection to demonstration. of the Law of the Archimedean lever; equating, from a historical perspective, the generality of the Law of the Lever, to what Euclid’s V Postulate meant for science, that is, an axiom of apparent obviousness, demonstrable through facts, but whose revision and refutation allowed opening scientific knowledge to a new understanding of space.

As he declares, the Librario project is an essentially postal project, of communication between two points, since, according to the artist, intelligence – like communication – can only be understood as something that occurs between two brains, since Reducing it to the endogenous idea of ​​a single thinking mind leads us to irresolvable paradoxes that our culture must get rid of.

In this sense, the exhibition serves to present to the public the dialogue established between the Spanish artist and the Senegalese scientist, but also, through the work shown, the fruit of that work is transferred as a communication in the form of open letters to some of their teachers and intellectual references; as we can see explicitly in the main piece of the exhibition.

A suitcase convertible into a piece of furniture that serves openly, both as a shelf for the object contained inside – the artifact invented by Oumar Haidara – and as a sideboard for a video projection, which broadcasts the public video-letters dedicated, in this case , to Esther Ferrer and Juan Fernando de Laiglesia.

Finally, a suitcase-box with 64 mini books is on display, dedicated and in homage to his former professor and Professor of Sculpture at the University of Vigo mentioned above, Juan Fernando Laiglesia.

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Rubén Ramos Balsa (Santiago de Compostela, 1978) has lived in Singapore since 2014.

Graduated in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Pontevedra in the Specialty of Sculpture in 2001. He carried out doctoral studies between 2001 and 2003 at the University of Vigo and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. As complementary training, he attends courses taught by the filmmaker José Luís Guerín and by artists such as Marina Abramovic, Joan Fontcuberta, Esther Ferrer, among others.

From the beginning, his work is recognized and supported by different public and private institutions, enjoying numerous scholarships and residencies such as the Socrates-Erasmus Scholarship at the Kuopio Academy of Design and Crafts in Finland; Scholarship for Projects from INJUVE (Community of Madrid) or the Postgraduate Scholarship from the Barrié de la Maza Foundation, among others.

It is also worth highlighting awards such as 1st prize in the III Auditorio de Galicia Prize for Plastic Arts in Santiago de Compostela (2003), 1st Prize in the Purificación García Photography Contest in Madrid (2003), etc.

Throughout his career, he has exhibited in museums, institutions and galleries, both national and international: MAC (A Coruña); National Museum of Singapore (Singapore); Le Parvis. Center d’art contemporain (France); Kunst-Palast Museum (Dusseldorf, Germany); MARCO Museum (Vigo); Cervantes Institute (Beijing, China); LOOP 04 (Barcelona); Fúcares Gallery (Madrid/Almagro); F2 Gallery (Madrid); Mario Sequeira Gallery (Braga); CGAC (Santiago de Compostela); Torrente Ballester Center (Ferrol); Artificial-Image show room (Berlin), or at the Kuopio Academy of Design and Crafts in Kuopio (Finland).
In 2007 he participated representing Spain – along with José Luis Guerín and Manuel Vilariño – in the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale curated by Alberto Ruíz de Samaniego.