Lavadero space opens its borders

The private initiative has long since begun its withdrawal from the world of plastic arts to leave all the prominence to the public with all that that entails of politicization or cronyism … The crisis of more than a decade ago ended, for example, with many of the art galleries – a sector that has not managed to raise its head since, especially in the smaller cities. The particular projects promotion of young artists, so abundant in the eighties, began to be scarce. And in such a difficult scenario, the pandemic was the final blow to many interesting projects.

That is why it has so much merit that there are still heroic individual proposals that contribute to promoting emerging creation. Granada has an initiative as interesting as that of Laundry space, that welcomes during the month of August the collective Mental thing at Virgin neighborhood.

Now also converted into an international residence, LAV artist residence, this new facet began on August 1 with the arrival of Cosa Mentale, a project currently composed by two creators from France: Celia Bétourné and Louis Cortes. Both explore fields of audiovisual installation, virtual reality, video mapping and live encoding.

His proposal develops interactive systems, inverse design and reactive environments using above all generative techniques in his creation process. At the end of the month, from August 27-30, you will be able to see the results of your residency.

Espacio Lavadero thus joins the international residency program Res Artis, where artists from all over the world enjoy stays in other countries ranging from fifteen days to two months. Young people ‘rent’ the space and enjoy the interaction offered by rooms such as Lavadero as an emerging point of young local creation and of course the cultural and tourist offer that the city can offer.

Espacio Lavadero was born at the end of 2017 in the Concepcion street as a place for the dissemination and exhibition of current art. The objective of its founders, Miguel Ángel Moreno and Fran Pérez Rus, It was to create a meeting point for the young Granada creation.

Lavadero became famous for the attempted theft of one of his works, the Julio Anaya mural

“Our house was nearby and the idea was to find a place to install our studios. Then we saw the possibilities that space had, “he explains. Perez Rus on the origin of the initiative. Both had previously been linked to cultural management and decided to take advantage of their experience to optimize this space. He is currently the head of training and the new facet of international residency and Moreno the director of the space.

Pérez Rus is a visual artist born in Lupión (Jaén) and settled in Granada for fifteen years while Miguel Moreno Carretero is an artist and cultural manager born in Córdoba and residing in the city since 2015. Both are part of the FAR project (Relational Art Forum) and for eight years they have coordinated art projects in their respective locations.

In general, Espacio Lavadero contemplates a series of lines of action to energize the neighborhood and young cultural creation in the city. This is how the public art collection was born Almost invisible, that places pieces by current artists in the surrounding streets, “in a very indiscreet, almost imperceptible way” in the words of its promoters. A proposal made famous by the itent of asault of a mural of Julio Anaya.

It also offers a showcase for the dissemination, exhibition and sale of contemporary ceramics, taking its name Hisae’s window by the well-known Japanese ceramist who was very close to the founders of the space and who died in 2019.

On the other hand, they have a space for urban intervention in one of its walls and, inside it, there is a showroom, and coworking spaces, of which almost half of them have been allocated to this international residency project.