Dimensions: object, each: 375 x 585 x 1180 mm overall display dimensions variable
Copyright: © Guillermo Kuitca | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This untitled work by Guillermo Kuitca presents a grid-like arrangement of what appear to be worn-out mattresses or perhaps couches. It feels quite somber and institutional. What strikes you most about it? Curator: Ah, Kuitca! He always manages to evoke a sense of displacement, doesn't he? It's like a stage set waiting for a drama that never arrives. These aren't just mattresses, they're maps, perhaps of a lost city or a forgotten dream. Do you see the subtle markings on the fabric? Editor: Now that you mention it, they do resemble faded maps. So, it's not just about sleep or comfort then, is it? Curator: Sleep is never just sleep, darling! It's a journey, a landscape. Kuitca invites us to wander through the terrain of our own subconscious. A bit unsettling, don't you think, to confront our vulnerabilities laid bare like this? Editor: It is a bit unsettling, but I see now how much deeper it is than just discarded furniture. Thanks for illuminating that for me. Curator: My pleasure! Art should always stir something within us, even if it's a touch of unease.
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Guillermo Kuitca’s installation Untitled has the character of a stage set. On the twenty child-sized beds that make up the installation, Kuitca has painted road maps of Europe. The mattresses are punctuated by irregularly placed buttons, serving as markers for major cities. While the place names can be read by the viewer, Kuitca is not interested in the specific locations the maps represent. In fact, they are chosen precisely because the places themselves had no particular personal significance for him. He has said of them: ‘from the beginning the places named in the maps didn’t represent anything I knew, had seen in films, nor read in books; no here or there, just names. The name and its sound and resonance.’ (Guillermo Kuitca: Burning Beds - A Survey 1982-1994, 1994, p. 17.)
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