3 Months, 3 Weeks, 3 Days
Exhibition of Francesc Ruiz
28.09.24 — 21.01.25
Opening Saturday 28th September, 12 p.m. at ACVIC
Guided visit with the artist to the art interventions at Les Adoberies and the Museu de l'Art de la Pell (Leather Art Museum) on Saturday 28th September at 5 p.m.
Francesc Ruiz's project 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days tackles the frictions which occur between animal exploitation, the food and tannery industries, logistics infrastructures, and the natural environment in the plain of Vic and its surrounding areas. The project opens up the already-existing imaginaries drawn from the history of comics, alternative hentai, and anti-speciesist feminism.
The exhibition takes place in three spaces in the town of Vic, ACVIC, Les Adoberies, and the Museu de l'Art de la Pell.
At ACVIC, we find the core of the exhibition, a mural which covers the entirety of the two main rooms, where shmoos—a fictional animal species originally created by comic book artist Al Capp in the 1940s—run through the landscapes of the meat industry in the region, the farms, the C-25 motorway, the Balenyà slaughterhouses, the Gurb estate, the Ter river.
Shmoos are characterised by abundance, providing humans with eggs, bottled milk, and butter, and lovingly self-sacrifice so their delicious flesh can be cooked and eaten. Shmoos reproduce very quickly, and are an unlimited natural resource. Their abundance, however, destabilises the logic of capitalism: you do not need to consume, nor need you work in order to feed yourself. The shmoos signify a full-blown food utopia.
In the adjacent room, we find the artwork which gives the exhibition its title, a calendar that dates only three months, three weeks, and three days, representing the duration of a sow's pregnancy. The calendar is illustrated with sexualised images of a shmoo in the manner of an alternative hentai, and accompanied by feminised proteins, those derived from processes of animal gestation such as milk, eggs, and butter, in a reference to one of the classic texts of anti-speciesist feminism "The sexual politics of the flesh" by Carol Adams.
The exhibition continues a few metres away, crossing the Meder River to the newly rehabilitated tanneries in front of ACVIC, where the original architecture has been restored, preserving traces of the activity of the leather tanning process, and of the way that work was organised. A co-working area in the upper floors, replaces leather craft with contemporary "creative" work. In this area, we find an artwork which gathers together a set of wall calendars with images of shmoos shedding their skin, located where workers used to hang calendars with female nudes.
Finally, at the website of the Museu de l'Art de la Pell, which houses one of the world's most important collections of objects made of leather, members of the general public may download a visual guide of an alternative tour to the permanent collection, which raises a number of questions about the knowledge, discomfort, and violence connected with the objects exhibited there.
Francesc Ruiz (Barcelona, 1971) currently lives and works between Ripoll and Barcelona. Since the nineties, he has focused his artistic work on drawing, using comics to explore new narrative languages. He himself calls it "expanded comics", a form which goes beyond cartoons, occupies exhibition spaces, or proposes games which involve viewer interaction. With strategies drawn from conceptual art and situationism, the artist creates art installations for specific urban and geographical contexts.
He has recently developed research which under the name of "Disruptive Distribution" visualises the circuits and systems through which goods and bodies move, and try to identify new spaces of intervention where to short-circuit the dance of capitalism.
His installations have been exhibited at EACC (Castellón), CA2M (Madrid), Gasworks (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo), FRAC PACA (Marseille), Weserburg Museum (Bremen), MNCARS (Madrid), IVAM (Valencia), MACBA (Barcelona), and in biennials such as the Venice Biennial in 2015, the Gothenburg Biennial, Sweden in 2017, the Momentum Biennial, Moss, Norway in 2019, or the Busan Biennial in 2020.
INFORMATION:
ACVIC Centre d’Arts Contemporànies
Sant Francesc 1, Vic
Tel +34 93 885 37 04 - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
From Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Close on public holidays.
Free entrance.
Free guided visit to the exhibition and educational activity. Places must be booked in advance by calling ACVIC.
MAP. Museu de l’Art de la Pell
C. Arquebisbe Alemany, 5, Vic
Tel: 93 883 32 79 · www.museuartpellvic.cat
From Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Sundays and public holidays from 11 a.m. to 2 p. m.
December 24th and 31st from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The Museum will remain closed on Mondays; January 1st and 6th; on Easter Monday and December 25th and 26th.
Entrance to the museum is free. Tickets on sale until half an hour before closing.
Adoberies
Carrer de les Adoberies, 8, Vic.
Opening hours and guided tours according to booked visits.
Free entrance.
