Hauser & Wirth Menorca is an art and education centre in the natural setting of Isla del Rey, the island in Mahon harbour. Hauser & Wirth sensitively repurposed some of the existing 18th-century outbuildings of the naval hospital to create the 1,500 sq.m art centre, which has welcomed over 180,000 visitors since it opened in 2021.
The exhibition space comprises eight galleries and an outdoor sculpture trail. A garden by the landscape designer Piet Oudolf runs alongside the gallery buildings, incorporating native perennials and plants suited to the Mediterranean climate. Adjacent to the gallery is Cantina, a lively outdoor restaurant set under the shade of the olive trees, focusing on local produce and Menorca cuisine. The management of the restaurant has been taken over by Hauser & Wirth but you will recognise the team from previous years.
SUMMER 2024 EXHIBITIONS
Roni Horn Until 27 OCTOBER
An exhibition by the New York-based artist Roni Horn (Joan Miró Prize in 2013) features a selection of sculptures and installations that interact with the historical gallery spaces and appear to be in a constant state of change, responding to nature through the skylights and windows and the presence of visitors.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a collection of nine round sculptures made from solid cast glass. Horn creates these sculptures by pouring coloured molten glass into a mould, and letting it gradually harden over the course of several months. The resulting sculpture has rough sides showing the impression of the mould in which it was cast, while its firepolished top is smooth and glossy, resembling a crystalline pool of water. In the main hall you can also see pieces inspired by the verses of Emily Dickinson.
In the adjacent room you can find the pure gold sculpture ‘Double Mobius, v. 2’; two ribbons in the form of a Möbius strip, a geometrical form that appears to be two sided, but only has one side.The piece is designed to “strip away the layers of cultural significance associated with gold and allow visitors to experience the actual material, in the shape of a strip denoting both intimacy and infinity”.
In the final room is a black sphere that is not a sphere, but an Asphere. It is a copper work which appears to the eye as a ball, but it is not symmetrical in one axis. Horn has described the work as ‘a self-portrait’, linked to the artist’s experience of androgyny and resistance to binary labels.
Horn’s works are featured in numerous major international institutions and collections including the Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; Tate Modern, London, England; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.
Eduardo Chillida ‘Chillida in Menorca’ Until 27 OCTOBER
The exhibition of works by the influential Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924 – 2002) is part of a wider programme celebrating his centenary. The artist had a deep connection to Menorca through a selection of sculptures and works on paper created during his time on the island. The exhibition contrasts these works with some of those he produced in the Basque country.
The son and grandson of Chillida were at the press launch of the exhibition and they gave us a wonderful insight into family life with the artist. On his visits to Menorca, Chillida drew inspiration from the white light of the Mediterranean that was a perfect contrast to the ‘black light’ of his native Basque Country. They told us how he became a completely different person whenever he was here, he felt freer and was able to enjoy creating pieces outside in the open air by himself. He said that Menorca was a wonderful place, not just because of the light but also because of its open character.
Chillida spent many summers here from 1989. He set up an outdoor studio at ‘Quatre Vents’, the family house in Alcaufar he created with his wife Pilar Belzunce. There he found a quiet place to work on his clay sculptures, surrounded by the fields and their dry-stone walls. At ‘Quatre Vents’, he also had a studio with a large window overlooking the sea, where he explored many of his ‘gravitations’. He spent his whole life fighting against Newton trying to make all his pieces float, or rather “go up and not down”.
On the walls of the gallery, you can see many of his paper collages. He hated the idea of using glue and if you look closely, you will see that he used wires to join the paper. This allowed him to keep the space between the layers, again allowing his art to float.
His work in Menorca was completely different to the steel sculptures he created in a forge in the Basque country emphasising Chillida’s interest in making space visible through the forms around it.
His steel sculptures took years to produce. His grandson explained how one (see picture) had started out as a piece of steel more than double the height of the finished piece. When you visit the exhibition make sure you take a close look at this sculpture to marvel at the hours and work involved to bend the metal into such a shape. And to give you a further insight into the mind of the artist, his grandson told us he spent two weeks walking around the finished sculpture before deciding on the exact place to put his signature stamp; he was a perfectionist.
We were told that Chillida never planned exactly what he was going to do, but let his pieces evolve. He said he ‘never knew how things were going to be but he knew how they were not going to be” and “if you know what you are going to do then you have done it before”. He had a large family of 8 children and many grandchildren, and they grew up around his work, playing amongst his sculptures. They had family lunches every Sunday, but he was always thinking, being curious and aware of everything happening around him, such as a leaf on the wind.
At the exhibition you can see examples of his ‘Lurra’ sculptures that he modelled in Menorca —a series named after the word ‘earth’ in Basque. They are made from chamotte clay, a type of clay which can be fired in large blocks without breaking.
Every piece in the exhibition is unique; he did not believe in making copies. He only did so once when a gallery sold out of his work and persuaded him to make 4 additional works in bronze. He hated it and likened the gallery to a shoe shop. His wife warned him that this attitude was going to be very bad for his career, but he said he preferred to multiply the owners and not the work. It didn’t seem to do him any harm. Throughout his lifetime Chillida was recognised with numerous awards, including the Grand International Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale (1958), Kandinsky Prize (1960), Grand Award for Arts in France (1984), and Jack Goldhill Award from the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1996).
There are Exhibition Guided Tours every day from 6 June at 12.15 pm in English and 6.15 pm in Spanish/Catalan
More information at https://menorca.hauserwirth.com/en/home where you can book the yellow catamaran to take you to the Isla de Rey.
