Domènec. Not here, not anywhere.

About

Domènec’s solo exhibition (Mataró, 1962) takes a look at his work from the late 1990s to the present day and includes new projects. Based on several buildings or monuments that are emblematic of modernity, Domènec analyses the proposals of the modern movement and its legacy in contemporary times, using in situ projects, installations, models, photographs, workshops, seminars and videos to support his research. His work starts from the different local contexts and establishes a dialogue with other international spheres, in order to raise the current impact of utopian proposals arising from the industrial revolution and in opposition to capitalism.
The growth of an urban proletariat in the nineteenth century meant the articulation of discourses and social models that put forward proposals based on social justice and egalitarianism. Utopian communism and socialism developed architectural models that reflected a concept of coexistence within the urban space focused on community service and improvement of living conditions. Domènec works on these exemplary devices and the rupture of what he himself describes as a “fragile contract between capital and the social body”. The transformation of the socio-political circumstances generated by these devices sometimes also entails changes in use and the establishment of dystopian models.

Social housing buildings converted into military barracks or internment camps; statues of circumstantial heroes, demolished for their meaning and contradiction; or the absurdity of a ghost town of military training to attack enemy urban nuclei, never officially recognized, are some of the cases that serve Domènec to investigate the dysfunctions of the processes of modernity and the political narratives that marginalize these stories; in short, on the rupture of a social project that in neoliberalism becomes the exacerbation of individualism. His work gives voice to the protagonists, to unofficial discourses, and moves away from the dominant stories to restore memory.