- The Municipal Board of Ruzafa will host the best proposals of the II Premi Jerònima Galés, which this year has had the participation of 68 projects.
- The Libraries have collaborated with this award, while lending their exhibition space to promote it and, in the future, other artistic projects in Valencia.
The Municipal Libraries inaugurate their new exhibition space in the Ruzafa Municipal Board with the work of eight women artists: the best proposals of the II Premi Jerònima Galés, an award that recognises the most outstanding works of experimental book publishing by women, and which this year has had the participation of 68 projects. In this way, the Libraries have collaborated with this award, at the same time as they have lent their exhibition space to promote it and, in the future, other artistic projects in Valencia.
‘We are very pleased to inaugurate the exhibition hall of the Junta Municipal de Ruzafa, after the complete refurbishment of the building. From now on, we hope that this space will serve to give voice and projection to top-level artistic projects in the city of Valencia, and to continue making art and culture accessible in our neighbourhoods’, said the councillor for Cultural Action, José Luis Moreno, who took part in the double inauguration, which took place this morning.
The exhibition of the II Premi Jerònima Galés will display eight artist’s books, all of them conceived as works of art of experimental publishing: the winner, the winner of the Special Youth Prize and the six runners-up prizes.
From Arctic winter to the light of lenses
The first prize, with an endowment of 1,500 euros, went to the project Solstice 2, by Lemos+Lehmann. It is a limited edition sonic artist’s book that embodies the duo’s incursion into the spiritual cycle of the arctic winter. A liminal space between the human, the posthuman and the dissolution of the self as a state of freedom. It is a sensory experience that unfolds with each of the layers that make up the work, immersing the reader in the proposal, like a ritual act.
The Special Youth Prize, which received an award of 500 euros and is aimed at artists under 30 years of age, went to Ver lo Invisible, by Arianne Garrido, a book made up of different gadgets and lenses that explore the relationship between light and the plane of representation. This work invites us to reflect on the nature of reality: ‘What does it mean to be visible or invisible in a world where light can decompose and refract in unimaginable ways? How does our perception of the world change when we realise that what we see is only part of the whole story?
Finally, the exhibition is completed with 6 runners-up prizes of 300 euros each for the works Peligrosa by Art al Quadrat, Libro de letras by Amparo Berenguer, Códigos by María Aranguren, El amor, las mujeres y la muerte by Elisa Terroba, Sabiduría contenida by Elena Marí and Pensamiento Sonoro, by Mónica Mura.
The renowned 16th-century printer Jerònima Galés lends her name to this award. ‘Conceived as a work of art, the artist’s book allows for a high level of experimentation on the part of the creators’, said Gertrud Gómez, curator of the exhibition. Gómez also highlighted the artistic quality of all the projects presented, and encouraged the neighbourhood to get to know the creations ‘together with the formal exploration, which combines different sensorial forms for the reader to explore’.
During the exhibition, the round table Beyond Paper will be held, where the participating artists will meet to create a space for reflection and dialogue on the contemporary conception of the artist’s book open to different visual languages.