AFTER

After: a dark basement, fragmented stories merging into one. There is no point of entry, no place of exit (1)—only a way to inhabit the dump. There is babble, and the air smells of discomfort.

After is the continuation of Mecheros de Gasolina, a project born from the emotional and professional connection between artists Sahatsa Jauregi (Bilbao) and Julià Panadès (Mallorca).

The two artists first met in 2015 during an artistic residency in the Basque Country, where they sensed early signs of a shared sensibility. In the spring of 2018, they were invited to hold a public conversation as part of the “Vis a Vis” initiative in Bilbao. Found objects, accumulation, emotional context, the irrational, intuition, humor, desire, whimsy, post-industrial aesthetics, assemblage, decay, imitation, noble materials, play, ritual, nostalgia, ecology, Brazil, excess, things, adoration, the island of Mallorca, trophies, spirituality, crystals, flea markets, alternative therapies, groundedness, decoration, impermanence, chance, failure, rarities, precarity, reuse, and collecting—these were some of the words used to describe that encounter in the publication that followed.

In the fall of 2019, a collaborative residency at Tabakalera gave them the opportunity to share time and studio space for two months—interrupting their usual processes and allowing them to explore their shared language through the Mecheros de Gasolina project. In 2021, the outcome was presented in the exhibition Estudiotik at, also at Tabakalera in Donostia.

(1) Excerpt from a text by Iker Fidalgo for the Vis a Vis publication (2019)