THE BLANKET 

Casa Árabe Madrid

Material: Fotography

27/02/2015 - 15/04/2015

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When The Blanket has been just a project on paper, Keshta, in seconds, became a victim of his own art. Just a few meters from Casa Arabe en Madrid, the artist was taking measurements for Burned CD, an exhibition due to open some weeks later at the old menagerie Retiro Park, when , suddenly, he was cornered by several members of the Special Operations Group of the Spanish Army and other security agencies of the State that made him kneel with his hands behind his head. within minutes, the safety device surrounded the park. A man, overcome by panic after the terrorist attacks of Paris and amid a climate of yellow alert for terrorism in Madrid, had confused the artist with a jihadist and had alerted the police. After checking that everything had been an unfortunate mistake, Keshta regained its alleged weapons - computer, mobile phone and various documents - and was 'released'. However, this apparent physical freedom masked a real prison, fear and anxiety about such an experience. The order of 'DOWN!' that gave the agent was etched in the memory of Keshta but he decided to transform the shock into creative energy, thus giving rise to the idea of a second work (photographs), 'INTEGRATION', which completed THe Blanket. These images correspond to the return of the artist to Andorra, his place of residence, after the incident at Retiro Park, and show Keshta dressed entirely in white in an attempt to feel integrated into the snowy landscape of the town. Formally, the image is a pristine but it hides a gray reality, which is the difficulty of full integration, the impossible 'whitening' of some physical and cultural features. After eleven years living and working in Europe, with 2890800 minutes of day and 2890800 minutes of the night, as indicated by the photographs, the process is not yet completed, if such

a thing is possible. This skepticism is confirmed by the mathematical theory, since the concept of integration, a sum of infinite addends, infinitely small, is an unfinished process by definition. However, if both rational thought and the current circumstances tell us that fell integration is impossible, is it not imagination, in this case, art, more necessary then ever?