“This is Can Bum” is an expression used traditionally in Mallorca to describe a messy place or a household run without any order or rules. A family lives in Can Bum when everybody acts separately, not as part of a system, but sharing the same space.

Are we then suggesting with the title that the exhibition that L21 has put together in Can Marquès lacks any curatorial guidance to connect artists, works and context? Yes. And no.

We have modernised the term and made it explosive. Bum becomes Boom, suggesting a bang, an echo, but also prosperity and success. An apparent disconnection between the contemporary artworks and the baroque and modernist furniture reverberates along the noble house. Why would they stand in harmony? 

Although there is a stone arch from the late thirteenth century or beginning of the fourteenth century, the first preserved documents date from the sixteenth century. Since then, the house has had many owners and thus different names depending on the family that resided there: Can Fuster (1510 – 1587), Can Desbrull (1587 – 1640), Can Bassa (1651 – 1757), Can Vich de Superna (1757 – 1845), Can Palou de Comassema (1845 – 1906), and Can Marquès (1906 – 1965, althouth the name has remained the same). 

Different refurbishments have shaped the structure and decoration of Can Marquès, transforming the nature of the building, from a renaissance house, to a baroque, neoclassical, and a modernist one, on top of the most recent rehabilitations from the 21st century.  The exhibition organised by L21 brings in a new temporary layer to these different historical strata that blend together in the space.

Are the artists included in the exhibition interrupting this harmonious merge of architectural periods or are they playing a role in transforming all this in a Can Bum? Let’s go over what everybody is bringing in the house and leave the viewer to decide if they are more inclined to conceive this exhibition as a Bum or as a Boom.

Gao Hang

Religious or battle scenes were almost mandatory for any high-class noble household, particularly in the first room that the visitors visit when they set foot in the house. The four colour fields used by the artist probably catch the attention of the saints present in the other paintings, which become spectators of a new intimacy of two male figures wrestling. 

Edu Carrillo

And while everybody is contemplating the wrestling, Carrillo’s characters play hide and seek with apostoles from other paintings. Perhaps they will find their way to the hidden secret doors that connect one room to the other.

Alejandro Leonhardt

Quebrar su voluntad para que se someta a tu voluntad is a sculpture about transformation. The found boat, placed on the trestles, sealed with fibreglass and putty, has ceased to be a boat. Its functionality, like so many rooms and furnishings in the noble house, has mutated, has been reconceived and is in a state of suspended evolution.

Fátima de Juan

Serene and contemplative, a green-haired, green-eyed lady delicately holds her pet. She gains a halo of spiciness when we realise that she shares almost the same eyes with the snake. In the context of Can Marquès she seems to acquire the status of a powerful enigmatic magician.

Hunter Potter

Potter’s three paintings could represent three intimate and domestic moments that can happen in any household: In Farmer Wants a Wife the character takes off the hat, a gesture that says “I’m home” and is followed by The Kiss. Many marriages, happy and convenience ones, have inhabited the palazzo, and with each, a refurbishment was made. Up the ladder again! 

Daisy Dodd-Noble

The first two rooms in a typical noble household were conceived to welcome guests, and thus they were built and decorated following a particular structure and protocols that helped to keep certain rules while being welcoming. Daisy Dodd-Noble brings the warmth of the Mediterranean pine tree to the house and the non autochthonous palm tree which is known to be a symbol of hospitality in the Arabic culture and Mallorquin countryside houses. 

Okokume

Cosmic Girl is the character that has stayed side by side with Laura Mas (aka Okokume) in recent years. The turquoise-skinned girl represents a universal figure of care and social consciousness that hints at the female figures that have ruled Can Marquès throughout the centuries, from the first documented owner Elisabeth Fuster y Berard to the current owner.

Mira Makai

Mira Makai’s works often raise questions in the viewer, a mixture of empathy and sympathy for the creatures she creates in ceramics, combined with a curiosity to unveil their nature. Perhaps a dragon, perhaps a contemporary mythological creature, King of Fur could become the monster hiding under the beds in a haunted house. But a happy one, straight out of Where the Wild Things are.

Marc Badia

How does one inhabit a house? Marc Badia’s well-known big-nosed orange character seems to tell us that a house is inhabited in suspension. The spaces are left open, connecting with each other, open to whoever enters and leaves them. Some walls remain, and others are created. References to De Chirico are found with columns that we do not know whether they are Doric or “props” from a commercial. The renaissance style is invaded by the pastel tones of nineties films.

Ken Sortais

Without us noticing it at first sight, Sortais has brought a Renault car inside Can Marquès. Working with pieces from scrap yards to then model them and placing the latex textures in an upright position, his sculptures become half anthropomorphised totems, half grotesque monuments.

Vera Mota

Stance suggests movement and organic, almost corporeal forms. The gesture projected by the curvilinear metal plates rises intuitively upwards, at the same time as it is absorbed towards the floor. A combination of rigid and flexible gestures that connects with a space full of rules and protocols, but in constant evolution.

Stefan Rinck

Legend has it that a dragon wandered the streets surrounding Can Marquès in the seventeenth century. Known commonly as ‘Drac de na Coca’, the stuffed crocodile is now shown not too far from there, at the Diocesan Museum. Without knowing, with his gargoyles-like sculptures Stefan Rinck  brings us a tribute to this symbol of the city of Palma, and pairs it with one of its common inhabitants, the Paloma (pigeon). 

Nat Meade

There is almost an anthropological symbolism in the fact that Nat Meade’s paintings replace the baroque mirrors that normally hang from the main living room. In the absence of their reflective surface, what aspects get reflected back to us when we look at the paintings? The exposure of men’s heads to nature, fire and wood may give us some clues.

b.wing

Childhood narratives are at the core of the Hong Kong artist’s universe. The intimate and atemporal child portraits brought to Can Marquès somehow represent the kids that were born and raised in the house, that used to run room after room and celebrated their communions.

Richard Woods

There is evidence that Martí Marquès, the previous owner of the house at the beginning of the 20th century and who gave it its current name, placed his office desk in such a way that he could observe the rest of the house from it, room after room. Marquès was a farmer from Sóller, converted into an indiano and a bourgeois with positions in banking and the town hall. We dedicate to him the piece by Richard Woods that best refers to this combination of business and the rustic (and which coincidentally bears his initials), Pie Chart (MM).

Thomas Kiesseweter

One of the attractive aspects of Can Marquès is the mix of styles in interiorism, where one can see layers of different historical moments throughout the many rooms of the household. This could bring a feeling of overcharge, but somehow everything has its place, its balance. There is a similar nature in the sculptures of Thomas Kiessewetter, which somehow feel like cubist drawings materialised in the air. The formal complexity finds its stability in the monochrome colours, standing out among the majestic decoration.

Thanks to Nieves Barber for her generosity and the insights on the history of Can Marquès.

In collaboration with JPS Gallery and Galería Alegría.