Art Cologne Mallorca: Booth G136

Baró Galeria is pleased to announce its participation in the debut edition of Art Cologne Mallorca with the presentation ‘A Slow Collapse’. 

In a moment marked by acceleration and obsolescence, the works brought together in this project trace an archaeology of the present. From different perspectives, this group of works speculates on collapse not as an event, but as a process: a slow, extended condition that permeates matter, image, and fiction. The booth brings together works by Daniel Arsham, Vhils, Joana Vasconcelos, AVAF, Mie Olise, Mamali Shafahi, and Domenico Gutknecht.

Moving away from a linear narrative, the practices of Daniel Arsham and Vhils place matter in a state of active erosion, where objects and surfaces emerge as vestiges of possible futures. Objects and faces appear to have survived a time that has not yet occurred. Here, destruction is not violent, but gradual and almost silent, revealing hidden layers of memory.

In contrast to this logic of wear, Joana Vasconcelos and AVAF propose a collapse through excess. Their languages, shaped by accumulation, ornamentation, and visual saturation, situate material culture at a point of maximum density, where the decorative and the symbolic overflow into instability. Their respective approaches oscillate between the ornamental and the excessive, proposing accumulations that suggest saturation and symbolic collapse.

In a third movement, the paintings of Mie Olise and the works of Mamali Shafahi and Domenico Gutknecht shift collapse into the realm of fiction and the body. Hybrid figures, assemblages, and evolving narratives construct worlds in which the human, the animal, and the mythical intertwine, suggesting new forms of existence beyond the dissolution of known boundaries.

Far from an immediate apocalyptic vision, A Slow Collapse proposes inhabiting the interval: a space where forms have not disappeared, but are no longer stable. What kind of present emerges when everything seems to be sustained within that threshold, between accumulation, erosion, and reinvention?