BREAK DOWN THE WALLS
		Oriol Rius - Barcelona, 2004
ARTISTA VISUAL Esparreguera, 1944 - Bellcaire d'Empordà, 2011 Mail to Oriol sons: llums_altre_temps@yahoo.com. Barcelona. Catalonia. Spain. You may also see Oriol's personal website in catalan: oriolrius.info There you can see a collection of Oriol's works as well as some works of his late sculpture exhibition "El Mur" ("The Wall") besides the ones presented here. His work "The Wall" relates to the ominous reality of the walls that separate so many peoples, as now in Palestine.

	"The Wall", author's sculpture and painting exhibition about the ominous reality of the walls that separate so many peoples, as now in Palestine (see also under these lines). Ça n'est pas un poème All but a poem "Stop the wall" is a movement in favour of tearing down the 30 feet wall that Israel raises encercling Palestine. See also the expressive images of stopthewall.org These are the remains of Berlin´s wall, Die Mauer. I hope we will see soon the wall encircling Palestine breaking down as well. Berlin is not a memory anymore. Berlin is now Qalqilya or Abu Dis.
		THE WALL - Exhibition in the Montcada i Reixac's Auditorium. Barcelona. March-April 2004. The mayor of Montcada i Reixac (Barcelona), in his greeting in the catalogue of the exhibition, says that I speak about walls that do not sort out, but, on the contrary, join through the sensitivity. I like this reading. In the work that I show you beside these lines some stylized persons, of lead and faceless, break down and win the prefabricated walls that encircle Palestine. Hopefully we can soon look at them without walls through the middle, and without be ashamed because of our insensibility. The work that gives name to this exhibition, The Wall, plays a very central roll, not only in this exhibition and in my current artistic work, but also in my daily life, since I feel very uncomfortable, from my occidental welfare, in front of the crude and bloody problems of so many people that, like the Palestinian, or in years past the German, suffer the fracture and tearing of their land because of a wall that shatters its fields, families and landscapes. The Wall wants to be homage to those who suffer and have gone through the brutality of a wall that cuts their daily life, sorting them out from relatives and friends, and splitting its earth in two or more pieces. The The Wall sculpture is an alternative one, highly differentiated, from my Utopia sculpture at the Esparreguera Town Park, but it shares with this his playing with the perspective. In Utopia, two Chillida like curves become a circle and a square in being contemplated frontally and from far away. In The Wall, a curve slithers and crowns an inclined wall that seems to sink. This curve, as those of Utopia, also develops us the utopian quadrature of circle, in a prospect of some 25 meters. This utopian component wants to be a chance of hope in the middle of so much impotence. It wants to be a proclamation that the utopia of tear down all walls is still possible. At the same time, The Wall is a reflection that goes beyond the obstacles created by the man. Since long time ago an image of Albert Camus obsesses me. He imagined the man in front of a wall, incapable of going beyond it as well as of knowing what is behind there. The Wall and the other works-scale models that accompany it are like a wail in front of our human disability for knowledge. Disability that has led us to converting our ignorance and fears into gods. In these small works, walls and gods stagger and collapse. The Aztec pyramid of the moon sinks, and the lares -roman gods that at another time presided over our homes, as nowadays images of buda, saints and virgins still do- join to the slow dawn of gods. They want to suggest –let’s me express in a tautological way- the loss of credibility of creeds and beliefs, which being narrowly tied to each territory and civilization convert the gods into flags and the catechisms in edicts of war. This exhibition leads to the present virtual exhibition at internet about the wall as a source of separation and exclusion. In this site you will find quickly a set of pictures and texts about the walls of Palestine, Berlin, Kuwait..., and of the fortified and walled residential neighbourhoods -the gated communities- that proliferate in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, California and Florida, so as in Puerta de Hierro and La Moraleja in Madrid... You may find also references to less visible walls but more resistant to be pierced and torn down as the ones that exclude “the untouchable” or encircle those who are strangers to us in ghettos, Jewries, marginal neighbourhoods and new apartheids. If you have any interesting experience or picture about these items send it to me. I will joint it to this site. This virtual exhibition will culminate, in turn, in an exhibition/installation about the same subject, at the Technical Architects Society of Barcelona (Col·legi d'Aparelladors i Arquitectes Tècnics de Barcelona), next year. In the meanwhile you can see a collection of my work at oriolrius.info Oriol Rius - Barcelona, March 2004             In 5 july 2005 a replica of this sculpture was erected at Reixac Gardens, near Barcelona. I like this place. It preserves a spirit of friendship that fits perfectly to the purpose of this sculpture.