Spring comes to Madrid. The shy temperatures rising, the progressive dilatation of the days and the first flowers warn us. It's time to enjoy outdoor the beauty of this season, so the exhibition we recommend this week could not be more appropriate. La Saison des fêtes (The festivals’ station), by Pierre Huyghe makes the most the possibilities the majestic Retiro Park Crystal Palace gives to host this exhibition.
A great circle chairs the center of the Palace, in it perhaps evoking a time measuring instrument, follow the typical species of each season, month, party. Every season has its particular big party and each party has its symbol in a flower.
This organic rosette integrates holidays and celebrations popular around the world enabling the creation of a utopian universe where all species can flourish simultaneously, where all the floral symbols may be one, where the integration of all events takes its most absolute sense. An events’ bunch.
La Saison des fêtes was specially created for this space by trying to restore functionality for which it was originally conceived: one of the first international flora fair exhibitions. In 1887 was inaugurated with a flower show dedicated to Philippines, a Spanish colony in these days. From March the 17th it hosts Pierre Huyghe’s project on cyclic succession of seasons, holidays, rituals and its link with flowers, plants and trees flowering.
It is not the first time Huyghe studies the celebrations, as he did in Streamside Day (2003), a parade in Fishkill, New York, to celebrate the establishment of a new urban community in a stereotypical development. But often, celebrations take on new hybrid forms when new communities: in the migration process old ways are mixed to new social and cultural habits.
The Crystal Palace stands out from the beauty places you will find in the Parque del Buen Retiro. It is a glass and metal cathedral built early this century and preserves that typical romantic atmosphere. Its shape was designed as a hothouse, with exotic trees inside and takes out all natural light through its transparent dome and stained glass. Usually, the Crystal Palace hosts exhibitions of Contemporary Art Centre Reina Sofia.
La Saison des fêtes carries to the maximum this palace’s oneiric halo guarded by a lake of swamp cypresses, submerged dreamed trees. The exotic flowers chosen by Huyghe and the plants in full greenery, magically embellish the Crystal Palace with life, with color.
Can you think of a better way to inaugurate spring that surrounded by flowers?
More information:
Pierre Huyghe, La Saison des fêtes
Venue: Palacio de Cristal, Parque del Retiro
Dates: until May the 31st
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia