Loan of the sculpture “L’Oiseau se niche sur les doigts en fleur” for Casal Balaguer

The collective exhibition The House and the Forest is a collaboration between Can Balaguer, artist and curator Janice McNab and gallerist-producer Antoni Ferrer. The exhibition will explore how plants, animals, land and climate affect our daily existence, almost without us realizing it. Our gaze is often more about looking inward, looking back, to the past or other concerns. We fill the inner forests with dreams, memories, desires and, in our minds, the tree becomes a metaphor and resource. The House and the Forest brings together a group of artists who explore this connection and disconnection with the living world: Peter Bradley, Ken Kiff, Jennifer Latour, Edward Lipski, Asunción Molinos Gordo and Joana Vasconcelos dialogue with anonymous artists’ ex-votos from Mallorca. The ideas of looking outward and looking inward, present and past, will be woven through the historic rooms of Can Balaguer. Joan Miró’s sculpture L’Oiseau se neste sur les doigts en fleur plays a key role in this discourse. It represents Miró’s imprint on Mallorca and brings the island into the space, roots the exhibition in local history and connects with many of the selected works.

Casal Balaguer, a former 18th-century manor house, houses one of the cultural spaces of Palma City Council. In the 20th century it was owned by the musician Josep Balaguer i Vallès, from whom it takes its name; upon his death, he ceded the property to the City Council. It is also the headquarters of the Cercle de Belles Arts de Palma. In 2010, a comprehensive renovation of the building began, carried out by the architectural studios Flores&Prats and Duch-Pizà, a project nominated for the 2015 Mies van der Rohe Award. The Can Balaguer Cultural Centre opened in 2017; the temporary exhibition hall was inaugurated, in addition to the permanent exhibition “La casa possible”. The renovation project, faithful and respectful of the environment and the original building, has involved the conversion of different rooms of the manor house into a museum and has converted the former private and domestic space into a cultural and public space, open to the public.