Sugar and nicotine | elinstantefundacion

activities

Sugar and Nicotine. Miguel Ángel Campano

May 29 2017 - July 28 2017

MAC / El instante

2017

My most pitiful work I call them humbugs I wonder why you felt attracted to them maybe because of their extreme fragility.

(…) before you arrived I lived in Paris on my way to the studio or during my lunch or coffee breaks I started to assemble these little pieces with cigarette butts and packets at that time I didn’t have any of these balls of string that you gave me nor candy I had cigarettes and hash.

at my school known as “de las maravillas” but I’d rather call it “de las penalidades” I had a really tough time well, there was this area in the chemistry and natural science lab where stuffed animals were exposed I wanted to flatter the ravens so I started bringing them some tiny things one of the first tiny things I brought them was this seagull I had hunted like I was fishing, using wire and a hook I used to feed it with sardines, it was pretty disgusting the ravens didn’t want it then I got a boat a dinghy -four sticks some strings and a hull- and sank it into a pond when the water evaporated the dinghy was shimmering covered in sea salt that they did like.

(…) I’ve always liked manual work since I was a kid for real I wonder if I took after my dad, who was also such a handyman a specialist in christmas nativity scenes he’d set the mager up underneath the stairwell the shepherds the silver river the small lights the three wise men with their surprises as well as some flexible African figures made out of wire and rubber that could bend into impossible postures only if I were more dedicated I’d become a jeweler but I could never use Imedio to set diamonds in platinum superglue would do the work just fine.

That dinghy was a way to exist get me a reward, huh? a classy way of flattering those ravens.

Why I decided to use sugar cubes? well, they were handy, easy to get in any of those cafés in Paris bowles stuffed with sugar cubes to bunch into my pockets and then home! sometimes I would undress them but sometimes I wouldn’t all shivering when they had beautiful wrapping papers they got to keep them look at those blue ones in new years eve feathers balloon remains of nothing would add up the glue was named owl anything usless I could grasp I added up.

Look I first remove the cellophane, then put it inside and close it with a sugar cube, a cigarrette butt or some string to keep it shut, man! if I don’t seal it, it can be easily opened this is a wrapped box, we don’t know its content it is like a mountain on a hole, I start putting just one thing and the rest comes alone maybe a cigarette end, maybe a sugar cube, maybe a clothes peg just like a song you find a word and then the lyrics fall together watch this lighter doesn’t work if I had glue I’d glue it see how it grows upwards let’s say its lying on its back but pregnant of course it might be just a coincidence but I always associate sugar to nicotine sometines there is a peppermint but I unwrap it and eat it same with cigarettes when I don’t have any I look for a butt and smoke it.

Why humbugs? Like a lie fugitive errant very precarious. If you don’t take good care of them they are self-destroyed. Time mistreats them kills them they fade away.

Is that why I named them after people?

Miguel Ángel Campano

Madrid, 1948

Museums and Public Collections

Diputación Provincial, Valencia. Museo d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona.

Foundation Peter Stuyvesant, Amsterdam.

Fundació Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona.

Fundación Coca-Cola, Madrid.

Fundación Juan March, Madrid.

Gobierno de Cantabria, Santander

Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia.

Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, Cuenca.