One of the characteristics of today’s global, hyper-communicated and hyper- populated world is that it has lost its human scale. Everything is grandiose, vertiginous and immeasurable. Cities bursting at the seams, thousands of millions of displacements per year, thousands of millions of pieces of information circulating daily on the Net, parallel realities and virtual realities multiplying by the minute. Where are we?, This feeling of facing a reality that overwhelms us has led some artists to try and discover the measure of things in their own bodies, through withdrawal and introspection. And also to try and understand the reality around them by taking to the streets with a new gaze. Beneath the Arm: Between the Palm of the Hand and the Armpit is a project curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa thataddresses the issues that affect our relationship with our surroundings in the work of fourteen contemporary artists. The title alludes to the gesture of carrying a canvas, and refers back to the investigations of the painters who went out to paint à plein air. It brings us back to the body, to the knowledge of reality through the body, and to art as a way of approaching reality from the human scale we thought we had lost.

Curator: Ángel Calvo Ulloa. Artists: Francesco Arena, Jorge Barbi, stanley brouwn, Christian García Bello, Fernando García, Irene Grau, Pedro G. Romero, Pere Llobera, Fina Miralles, Radouan Mriziga, Perejaume, Rodríguez-Méndez, Thomas Schütte y Juan Uslé. (CaixaForum press-release)