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