exhibition text:


A Contemporary Reading of The Bubble

Come to where the flavour is. A Marlboro slogan from 1975, long disappeared but nevertheless apt. I smoke Marlboro Ambers, those flavoured cigarettes with a bubble you can click depending on your preference. I get a lot of shit for them. The joke that never gets old. 
Once I cracked open one of the filters to see what I was ingesting. A plastic bubble presented itself, deep emerald green cushioned in white cottony fibre. It looked straight out of Alien, with an alluring pearlescent sheen. Still I smoke and I click. I'm OK. 

The need for variety is a contemporary condition. More precisely, this motivation is not new, but the access to more is increasingly available. What's your flavour? I'm still figuring out mine, meanwhile others seem equally unable to ascertain theirs. Take the bubble, which traditionally evoked ideas of protection and otherworldliness: in this current incarnation of the flavoured cigarette it also offers you more. More possibility to damage yourself and others around you. 

In Burbuja we see a selection of artists conscious of this state of desiderata. Departing from the concept of the artist's studio as a bubble, principles of safe space and a network of contemporaries are at once put forth and pulled apart. A central space - the bubble - has been cleared in reconsidering the relativity of the floor, walls and ceiling. Exhibiting sculpture, painting and installation, raw materials and potent colours diverge from powdered pigments and seemingly static objects perched at insidiously leaning angles. 

Distinct processes and practices are consciously brought together in Burbuja with the intention of cohabiting as a means of new possibility. Removed from the limitations of a gallery or museum, the artist's studio appears redefined and its variations, plural. Yet nothing is taken for granted and everything is used economically.

Be kind to your bubble and protect yourself. It's a rough world out there. 

-- Carly-Ann McGoldrick