Double Square 双方藝廊

●Exhibition Worklist
●Artist Statement:"In memory of my grandmother, Antonia" - Juan Zamora
●Artist's Talk

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Double Square Gallery is pleased to present Spanish artist Juan Zamora’s solo exhibition – The Broken Seas, from September 13 to October 29, 2022. This marks Zamora’s second solo exhibition at the gallery since his first one in 2020. This exhibition will feature more than thirty paintings, drawings and installations, which can be viewed as a phasal summary of Zamora’s research about the Broken-heart Syndrome in recent years. Drawing his artistic inspiration from natural ecology, the artist converts memories and feelings about loss into creative energy. Zamora specializes in utilizing mixed media: from Western and Eastern flora and plant leaves, to extracting blood from his body, to fluorescent cells of marine life, the artist has woven all these elements into the unique texture of his work. Furthermore, he has consistently made art in different ecological and geopolitical context. Consequently, his work reflects his feelings towards and engagement in environmental issues and human life experiences.

In recent years, the development of Zamora’s creative work revolves around the Broken-heart Syndrome (also known as “Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy,” which is a heart disease caused by sudden shocks, strong provocations, or intense mood changes.) The exhibition title, The Broken Seas, is inspired by this syndrome, through which the artist attempts to understand memory and losses in the past from two varying perspectives: personal feelings and regional ecology. Zamora’s work oftentimes blends human feelings and regional characteristics. He has tried to create his work in different ecological and geopolitical contexts. For instance, he traveled to a small village in Honduras, where floods occurred due to extreme weather conditions. He also went to remote, uninhabited island in Finland in search of nearly extinct herbs used in traditional treatments of heart conditions. He then translated these personal experiences into an exquisitely realistic style of expression.

The artworks featured in this exhibition form two viewing routes. One is the group of works inspired by the Broken-heart Syndrome. In the series of Herbal Medicines for Cardiovascular Diseases, Zamora collects herbs used for treating heart conditions in Western and Eastern traditional medicine, and creates fine and detailed drawings reminiscent of medieval plant illustrations. Selachimorpha, Tako, and Hearts comprise mixed media, realistic drawings of biological tissues. Mixing diverse techniques of music and video, the series of Wormholes and Tsubo reveal alternative perspectives to view human relations with highly poetic symbols. The other group of works revolves around the sea, and addresses human and regional connections. Zamora collaborates with a high-tech lab of aquatic life in Norway to use fluorescent algae as samples to extract biofluorescent coating material used on his two-dimensional and installation works. The series of Lágrimas Azules comprises various seascapes from different places around the world visited by the artist. To make A Daylight, the artist de-magnetizes the cassette tapes he found at his grandfather’s house. He utilizes each of the twenty-four tapes to record an hour of sounds of the Mediterranean Sea, and paints the cases of the tapes with biofluorescent coating material. Zamora’s work amalgamates intense feelings with distinctive geographic characteristics, and demonstrates comprehensively the artist’s sensibility and thoughts, conveying moving episodes co-orchestrated by humans, places, and objects.