Enric Farrés Duran
(Palafrugell, Girona, 1983)
Enric Farrés Duran (Palafrugell, Girona, 1983) is a teller of stories in which the real and the fictional continually brush against and modify one another. His work is articulated on the basis of researches, coincidences and fortuitous encounters and the possibility of making connections between different places, objects and circumstances. Farrés Duran creates narratives that bring out hidden and unexpected relationships, which in some cases involve different times and places. The story — narrated and written — plays an essential role in these processes, and the information it provides is essential to our engaging with the process and the connections it establishes. Farrés Duran’s projects are embodied in installations, walks with commentary, guided tours, books and videos.
In much the same way that the novelist and essayist Enrique Vila-Matas does not so much write as rewrite, Farrés Duran combines and shuffles technical and conceptual strategies as he plays with the sum of his cultural baggage. The reference to Vila-Matas is not casual, because the artist has taken his novel Never Any End to Paris and created what is literally a formal clone of it as a starting point for a series of projects in which he takes us on an autobiographical journey on which the true and the false, the plausible and the improbable merge and fuse.
In conjunction with Joana Llauradó, Farrés Duran has developed projects for the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Museu Frederic Marès, in the form of guided tours that explore various aspects related to collecting and archiving, how historiography is written and the different levels of mediation surrounding the works.
One of his most recent works is The Frustrated Journey, produced by Cal Cego, which takes as its starting point the short story ‘El viatge frustrat’ by Josep Pla. Here, as in other of his works, Farrés Duran initiates stories that combine actual facts and invented elements which he, as the good narrator he is, invites us to follow and enjoy, but also to question and challenge.
Montse Badia
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