For more than a decade, Alegría & Piñero (Alegría Castillo, Córdoba 1985, and José Antonio Sánchez Piñero, Chiclana de la Frontera 1975) have jointly developed long-term projects in which optical and sound artifices play a central role. The use of mechanics, both elemental and precise, conditions their processes to a rigorously rational planning; a strict discipline that supports play and provides a coherent context where they can freely unleash fantasy. 

In the exhibition. De ida y vuelta ("Round Trip"), Alegría & Piñero present previous works such as Doner (2016) and Cabezas autoobturadas I and II (2015), which clearly manifest this vision of the mechanical apparatus as a trope whose limitations overpower representation, distort perceived reality, and generate duplicities where hidden truths are revealed.

The artists continue delving into the creative possibilities of rhetorical constraints and begin, for this exhibition, a new exploration of the figuration of language. This time, Alegría & Piñero place sculptural material at the center, subjecting it to an elaborate palindromic exercise in order to rediscover it from new perspectives, once freed from emotional, expressive, or symbolic implications. As they explain:

"We generate a list of raw materials, elemental to sculpture: iron, ceramics, beech... and we start identifying those that have palindromic potential, that is, that can be read in both directions. We detect an exclamation in the word `iron¿ (`¡oh, rey' 'oh, king!'), and we are overcome by the need to find those other images hidden within the body of language that the trope seems to unveil.

Like on a scale, on one side we place the elements, for example, napa (cloth), macramé thread, net, oak; and on the other side, the scenes emerge, created with these same materials: the edge emphasizes, grinding bread.

In this balancing act, the language subjected to the trope seeks counterweights and conjures scenes; each word is for itself and for another at the same time; each material is irreplaceable and occupies its exact place."

This exploration of the reversible and the dual in language recalls the words of Julio Cortázar (Belgium, 1914 - Paris, 1984), who noted that "A palindrome is the hell of freedom because it is the place where meaning submits to the tyranny of symmetry, but at the same time, within that rigor, the most unpredictable freedoms are unleashed." This idea underlies the work of Alegría & Piñero, where the symmetry of the palindrome not only reflects but also alters and multiplies meanings.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is the presentation of the collaborative project Panorama móvil ("Mobile Panorama"). This piece merges Alegría & Piñero's personal work with their extensive artistic collaboration with people with intellectual disabilities from the Occupational Center of La Puebla de Cazalla (Ojo Pértico Collective). The exhibition opens with Panorama en tren (2021), a rotating structure displaying a 60-meter roll of fabric painted on both sides. Its scenes are revealed in synchronized activations with lighting effects, shadow plays, and a sound archive composed of narratives and original musical pieces. On this same structure, to conclude the exhibition, Panorama de ida y vuelta (2024) will be presented, a new spectacle created specifically for this exhibition. In its activation, as the roll reaches the end, it continues spinning in reverse, giving rise, on this return journey, to a new narration through the use of a diorama.

"A palindrome is an inversion where meaning returns to its starting point, but in the return, something has changed; it is not just a mirror but an alteration of symmetry that reveals new possibilities within the repeated." These words by Gilles Deleuze (Paris 1925 - 1995) define Alegría & Piñero's interest in generating circular processes whose works invite the viewer to immerse themselves in a unique universe, where the beginning and the end are closer than they seem.

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· Download Gallery Sheet here.