Shadow 1977

Curator: Joan Hernandez Pijuan's "Shadow," from 1977—a graphite drawing on paper. My first thought? Spare, almost ghostly. What catches your eye? Editor: The austerity. This drawing breathes conceptual art; the essence of absence, perhaps, rendered as a geometric form. But what sociopolitical echoes do you perceive within it, coming from the 70's? Curator: I think for Pijuan it's less political in a direct sense and more about a personal vocabulary. You know, that rectangle looming—it feels less like a structure and more like a… memory fading. Like a childhood house barely remembered. Does that make sense? Editor: Absolutely, but it can be both. This period in Spain saw seismic shifts post-Franco. A shadow, for me, then speaks to imposed silences, obscured truths. The sparseness? Perhaps a visual resistance to the verbose rhetoric of power. I read the emptiness of the white palette against the textured surface as loaded. Curator: Maybe! Or perhaps it's about something far more universal. Think of a shadow not as oppression but as the very condition of light. We cannot know one without the other. Editor: Agreed. Light cannot exist without the barrier. And thinking about that binary is everything in those times, particularly regarding female voices in an art scene overwrought with toxic masculinity. It may look very minimal, but that sharp single stroke gives it presence and boldness. Curator: I see your point. Maybe it’s about finding resonance in these absences, using minimalist language to find space in between definitions. Editor: Yes! What initially reads as quietude evolves into a space humming with questions. Curator: Which makes me wonder if Pijuan knew that the simplest forms hold the biggest shadows... in every sense of the word. Editor: Exactly. It resonates with that sentiment perfectly!