The exhibition is organized around the most iconic complete series of the artist, Eugenio Ampudia, Donde dormir (2008-2018), which is set in dialogue with three more works: The dream of every artist (2000), Una corriente de aire (2015) ), and Museum and Space (2011).  In the series “Donde dormir” by Eugenio Ampudia, behind the apparent simplicity of the gesture of sleeping in cultural spaces lies a position of resistance and rebellion against certain attitudes of “the artistic” that are taken for granted until they become conventions.

The year this series was begun, 2008, ushered in an era of political upheaval. The urgency behind the emergence of movements like 15M, Occupy Wall Streetand Occupy the Museum, turned the act of sleeping into an act of resistance in itself and a declaration of intentions.

Over the course of the history of art, the act of sleeping has been viewed as a basic, subversive gesture when it comes to analysing our role as individuals in the construction of the social space. From the sleeping Eros that decorated Roman villas in the Hellenistic era one can draw a line that connects such seminal works as The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, by Goya (later reinterpreted so well by Yinka 14 december 2018. Centro Cultural de EspañaShonibare), The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening by Salvador Dalí, just one of the most salient examples of a capital theme in the practice of the surrealists

For Ampudia, the act of sleeping also evinces the tensions that arise between the subjectivity of the individual-spectator and that of the institution or cultural platform, thus dissociating culture and power. The places where he sleeps are not chosen randomly, they are not the result of chance. They are all carefully thought of and chosen for their political connotations and the series is only added to when a new place can add a new layer of meaning. For this reason, the series begins with the Prado museum under Goya’s The Third of May 1808. In this opening work one could note how the sleeping bag had the same red colour as Goya’s painting, the red of paint and of blood. Ampudia slept underneath, on the same side as the men facing the firing squad. He also sleeps in La Alhambra in Granada, in the Hall of the Kings, the place where political decisions were taken and which, years later, housed courts of justice. In another leap in time we can see the artist sleeping in one of the bare halls at the Ifema exhibition centre, before the preparations for ARCO, the contemporary art fair in Madrid, the place where the art market in Spain is played out.

Eugenio Ampudia is one of the most accomplished artists in Spain. His video work often re-creates real and imaginary spaces using visual imagery to explore our emotional connections to them. He won the Award AECA 2018 by ARCO to the best living artist in Spain. In 2008, Eugenio received the ARCO’s Critics Award for Best Spanish Artist.