Acto I: La Eterna Adolescencia
by Álvaro Urbano

A hybrid between travel chronicle and studio process notebook, this artist book tracks the construction of a failed modernist fantasy in the island of La Palma and the hallucinogenic properties of wild plants that grow across the Canary Islands. The publication enacts the physical experience of the multimedia installation anchored in TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, often dizzying and entangled, the different texts ramble across the banana plantations, now transformed into touristic hotspots among the fertile volcanic backdrop. Just as the botanic sculptures crafted by Urbano, the book is an exercise in appearance and apparition, using the Canary archipelago as a platform to reflect on the value of ruins as material memory.

This book is published as a companion of the exhibition Acto I: La Eterna Adolescencia by Álvaro Urbano, curated by Gilberto González at Tenerife Espacio de las Artes from 29.09.2023 to 18.02.2024.