A work by the artist Teresa Esteban

The Three Cultures Foundation presents the exhibition 'The Secret Garden'

photo_camera Atalayar_Exposición Jardín Secreto Fundación Tres Culturas

The Three Cultures Foundation presents its new exhibition, 'The Secret Garden', an exhibition by the artist Teresa Esteban in which she vindicates the study of mathematics in Islam as the source of its main themes: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.

The Secret Garden' is made up of some thirty pieces, mostly in marble, together with some mixed media creations on paper or wood. With this exhibition, Teresa Esteban develops her own vocabulary, fascinated by architecture and uninhabited spaces and passageways, such as staircases and corridors, where the human element is in transit, places that summon the presence of absence.

Her work in wood is slow, orderly and exquisite with a double formal play between the austere appearance of the exterior of the pieces and the expressive, irregular, sombre and stormy interiors. Hence its mysterious and disturbing character. Her sculptures are undoubtedly landscapes, although they do not seem to be a possible terrain for sculpture.

This exhibition evokes those gardens in which geometry has also been applied, which are articulated in a set of squares that rotate, forming star-shaped polygons in which the paving is mixed in different materials with a predominance of fresh marble that reflects the light. As the art critic Miguel Cereceda states, "the elements used by Teresa Esteban are indirect evocations of vegetation, water and the garden, through marble and tin. But her work also invokes the celestial vault, through architectures drawn from Islamic and Jewish vaults, and the image of temples and spaces of prayer and meditation: synagogues, cathedrals and mosques, in which recollection, silence and contemplation invite reconciliation". "For these three cultures (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the image of the garden is also a common, founding myth of origin. It is not only the place of the origin and creation of man, but also the place of arrival: the promised land, paradise. (...). This is why Teresa Esteban has decided to stage in the image of the garden the possibility of a real space of peace, love and reconciliation between the three cultures. She has done so deliberately, without transgressing the strict prohibition of images and idols, imposed by Abraham and Moses, reiterated by Paul of Tarsus and repeated again by Mohammed".

Miguel Cereceda is a Spanish art theorist and critic. Professionally, he is a professor of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. 

The exhibition will be shown at the Tres Culturas headquarters, the Hassan II Pavilion, Seville, from June 10 to September 9.

Visiting hours:

Monday to Thursday, from 08.30 to 20.00.

Friday, from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m

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