Refugi

Domènec's exhibition at the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya in Barcelona brings historical models of mountain refuges into dialogue with the sculpture Dos refugios y el miembro fantasma.

The exhibition brings together historical models of refuges from the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, made to study the structural resistance of mountain buildings, and places them in dialogue with the sculpture Dos refugios y el miembro fantasma. The work sets Ted Kaczynski's cabin, known as the Unabomber, against Le Cabanon by Le Corbusier, an archetype of modern utopias of housing. Between the two, Domènec leaves empty the space that would correspond to Henry David Thoreau's cabin, beside Lake Walden.

This gap, conceived as a phantom limb, evokes a utopia based on natural life and Thoreau's peaceful civil disobedience, in contrast to the violence of Kaczynski, author of letter bombs. For Panoràmic, Domènec extends the reflection with the models from the CEC's collection and a selection of photographs of mountain buildings, where the refuge appears both as a space of isolation and idealised living and as a hiding place or place of escape.

The whole questions modern utopias and presents the refuge as a place from which to dissent, desert or resist alienating urban life and today's mechanisms of control. The route combines three-dimensional objects and photography, and will be of interest to anyone who wishes to linger over the relationship between mountain architecture and thinking about dwelling.