SUITE EUROPA 2002

In the framework of the Programme for Cultural Action Abroad prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the occasion of Spain`s Presidency of the European Union, this exhibition of digital prints will be presented in the Palais Harrach. Besides the showcase for the dissemination and promotion of Spanish and Latin American art, this exhibition also endeavours to symbolise the strong bonds linking Spain, and by extension the European Union, and Latin America.

The exhibition provides an original backdrop for exploring contemporary Spanish and Latin American art and brings together works by outstanding Spanish and Latin American artists, representing the many and varied trends that characterise art today.

This set of prints, entitled "Suite Europa 2002", has been envisaged as part of a broader-reaching cultural project, which seeks to complement and enhance Spain`s Presidency of the European Union. This extensive exhibition will therefore span all fifteen European Union member States and over twenty Latin American countries. "Suite Europa 2002" will also be staged in the countries aspiring to join the European Union. The overall aim is to highlight Spain`s cohesive character and thus mirror the central theme we have chosen for our Presidency, namely to promote co-operation and integration among all European countries and strengthen ties between Europe and Latin America.

These Spanish and Latin American works of art introduce us to a field of artistic exploration in which the artists are not enshrined in a single school but instead offer us subtle associations, formal and conceptual, within a highly diverse range or artistic proposals and trends.

The "Suite Europa 2002" project, which brings together eighteen first-rate Spanish and Latin Amercian artists, is a portable gallery of diversity. The portfolio of prints and the itinerant exhibitions will unveil the many different ways light has of adopting forms and tonal expressions. With an instrument that never becomes blunt, the eighteen guest artists re-write Gilberto Owen`s aphorism: "My heart. I used it with my eyes." The dialogue of these imaginary travellers is very often open (Amat owes a lot to frequenting with raw materials from Oaxaca, and Cuevas to the lucid infernos of the Marquis of Sada) and at other times secret (the cartographies of Kuitca have progressively become interiors and Arroyo has injected literature in such a way that he no longer paints Quevedo`s spectacles: he sees through them).