Project PLAY — Juan Antonio Cerezuela
3 texts by Mark Fish as reactions to Project P L A Y
Juan Antonio Cerezuela is the artist selected for the exchange program between @homesessionbcn and @belgrade_artist_in_residence with the support of Institut Ramon Llull.
Juan Antonio Cerezuela (Cartagena, 1982) is a visual artist based in Barcelona. He has exhibited his works in Barcelona in centres such as Born CCM, Arts Santa Mònica, or Fabra i Coats. Some of his solo exhibitions are en horas bajas (La Espronceda), Blanco y ceniza (13ESPACIOarte), La memoria ignífuga (Fundación Gabarrón) and Full Blanks (CEART). Since 2018, Cerezuela develops his work in the art centre La Escocesa.
In his work, the correlation between language, time and space is usually present through installation, performance and site specific works. In them, elements and issues such as silence, invisibility or illegibility are constantly repeated to bring to light different tensions.
Can I quit being an Artist?
I started asking myself this question, moved by some mixed feelings, wondering if there are other ways of being — or not — in art. In fact, my first proposal in response was to use the production budget of the Homesession and Belgrade Exchange program to process my cessation as an artist.
However, the answer to this question started to raise many other questions which confronted me with some contradictions, driving me to a dead end. I needed to escape, to move position…
I needed to move…
During my first days in Belgrade, an idea came to my mind while I was walking through the city and I found some basketball courts in the way. I wanted to play basketball, and I wanted to look for a personal trajectory within the city that allowed me to play. Then, and with the help of residents and friends from Belgrade, I found basketball courts and playgrounds across the city.
One of the things that strike me here in Belgrade is the fact that these courts — as well as playgrounds — are very visible, well-maintained and generously spread across the city. I don't know if this abundance has to do with some kind of cultural or sporting tradition, or maybe with the fact that Yugoslavia hosted the 1970 Basketball World Cup, but what strikes me most is how present, how democratic and how public these spaces are.
To translate this research into an artistic work, I decided to visit as many courts as I could during my residency, and have a basketball play session on each of them. After that, for each court, I decided to produce a score based on the plays, to generate a map of the city through these sessions, and to record some videos and photos.
Text 1 — by Mark Fish
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Text 2 — by Mark Fish
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Text 3 — by Mark Fish
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