Memories of the Ground

"Memories of the Ground" is a group exhibition that revisits Juana Francés’s informalist practice through the work of contemporary women artists. Using four works by Francés as a thread, the exhibition traces her creative evolution while also bringing together pieces by Esther Gatón, Elena Lavellés, Menhir, Daniel Ortega, Miguel Sbastida, Julia Varela, and Laia Ventayol, all of which reflect on the human impact on the earth’s surface and on the condition of the soil. Francés’s painting frames the beginning and end of the exhibition, with the contemporary works arranged around it to consider extractivism, its social and political consequences, the idea of contemporary waste, and possible forms of reconciliation with the planet. The exhibition opens with "Composición nº2" (1960) and "Sin título" (c. 1960), works from the period in which Francés introduced the earth’s surface into painting through sand. Laia Ventayol’s installation examines the symbolic value that manufactured stones can acquire in construction and in the shaping of places of belonging. Elena Lavellés presents a body of work that explores the hidden human activities behind major oil, gold, and coal extraction zones. Menhir focuses on salt harvesting as a meditative practice and on the many symbolic layers the mineral has accumulated over time. In the second gallery, Francés’s "Tierra de Campos" introduces the use of fragments of different building materials, and Miguel Sbastida’s work responds to the changing geology of the Bilbao estuary, shaped by the city’s industrial past. Esther Gatón addresses the way plastic waste transforms the landscape. The exhibition concludes with Francés’s "Ser y ecología" (1971), a work shaped by her ongoing concern with human disconnection in the age of modern technology. In relation to this piece, Daniel Ortega presents works based on the waste left by everyday devices such as mobile phones, while Julia Varela works with plasma screens.