The interpretation of Madrid with Flor Hispania

The Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid will be filled with Flor Hispania based on a tour where the city of Madrid will be the epicenter of a geographical, political and cultural symbols interpretation structured in five chapters under the curatorship and works of David Bestué, together with pieces by other artists, to create a dialogue of the Madrid urban context, always in parallel with the transformations of the city, but also full of contradictions.

Decomposition, reinterpretation, reflection, dialogue, tradition, visual narratives, all these elements come together with works by David Bestué himself, as well as Elena Asins, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Manolo Valdés, Daniela Ortiz, Julia Varela, Jorge Oteiza or Víctor Santamarina, among others, to create a tour of pieces - many of which are part of the CA2M collection - from various disciplines from an intergenerational perspective.

Detall de Samuel, David Bestué (2024). Aleix Plademunt

Madrid is the capital, but also the geographical, political, economic and symbolic centre of Spain. With Flor Hispania, different perspectives, realities and possible imaginaries are contrasted and he does so from a north-south axis, from the official Madrid, from hidden aspects of the territory, the notion of the unbearable and also from material and characteristic discoveries of the place, a space where an analysis of the architectural and aesthetic elements of Madrid is carried out. Contrasting visions of the capital that go beyond moments, names, streets or documents. David Bestué takes different opposite poles and dualities to create an iconographic imaginary of Madrid where it never stops growing and expanding, but always explained from the epic, the lyrical, the abstract and figurative part, the conscious or dream part, but Madrid is also a form of power. From Norman Foster to Rafael Munárriz, or from Jorge Oteiza to the Banco de España of Candida Höfer.

Cerca de Layos, Toledo. Gerardo Custance (2007). Col·lecció CA2M

An exhibition that will run parallel to Humores y espespores by the artist Rodríguez-Méndez, curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa, and that can be visited until August 31 in the Madrid center. Bestué explains that one of the objectives of art is to try to capture and communicate with the present, with moments of conflict that must be recorded and explained, based on a main axis of considering it as a necessity. Past, present and future will be linked in Flor Hispania with a perfect selection of works and artists, of pieces that remain alive despite the passage of time and with new connotations that can still be written within a historical memory that can always be rewritten. David Bestué, present with works and also as curator, considers that these are works that are not closed and that this allows new paths of dialogue and discussions to be built, with current issues such as speculation or racism, among many of the topics present in the CA2M exhibition.

The unbearable as the result of the tension between disparate ways of understanding reality will be the final part to search for the real element as the conservation of a power or the need to decenter and modify real and symbolic goods. Madrid has many secrets and the exhibition combines all these creations to give rise to a city and a capital of Spain with many different visions and an imaginary future that will be completely different. What will Madrid be like in the future? The answer will be a matter of time.

Anti-colonial Monuments, Daniela Ortiz (2018). Col·lecció Fundació ARCO