Es tiempo de tomar medidas.
Se piensa con todo el cuerpo. Un pensamiento no vale nada, no es verdadero, si no se nutre de todos los sentidos. Necesitamos datos fiables para fabricar ideas claras y rotundas, capaces de alcanzar la máxima profundidad posible dentro del mínimo espacio, capaces de prender la chispa de una acción transformadora. No basta con acostumbrarse a olfatear la vida, a seguir los rastros, a discernir señales y leer signos. Hay que ir más allá de lo experimentado. Oler es algo más que un sentido químico detectado por sensores en las células que trasladan señales eléctricas al cerebro. El olfato concede señales anteriores a la vista, al tacto. Su misterio es profundo. Está ligado a zonas del cerebro donde se pasea el razonamiento asociativo y donde campan las emociones. Las ideas se pueden oler. En su esencia.

Eugenio Ampudia

When I presented the exhibition Nada que ganar [Nothing to Gain] in the Galería Max Estrella I had the opportunity to ‘burn’ my gallerist’s library. The temptation to burn his catalogues and art books was too strong, and with his collusion we proceeded to burn the documentation of the gallery – to watch it burn.

Then something surprising happened: some viewers, on seeing and hearing the flames before their eyes, said they could also smell the burnt paper. Smell is the easiest sense to monitor and the smell of burning is one of those we all remember most powerfully.

The Futurists believed that artistic creation should start with fingers blackened with ash and, personally, I believe in the intangibility of knowledge and I see a library as an almost living place, a place that grows and changes. In its combustion a book releases energy and produces light and heat. This transformation is the fundamental process of Nature.

Sometimes I think of the dead weight of all those tomes piled up in our heads and in our libraries and imagine the ashes of those books swirling and floating freely in space…

Eugenio Ampudia