FERNANDO SINAGA. The end of the world [L’origine du monde]. ZKT

“From the wheezing sound of the stars and their cycles one hears the instant when things lose
their width and material. The catastrophe. A sudden glint of light where all of life explodes.”
[F.S. August 30th, 2021]

The Fernando Pradilla Gallery is wrapping up this year with the exhibition El  n del mundo/L’origine du monde. ZKT [The end of the world/-
The Origin of the World. ZKT] by the artist Fernando Sinaga (Zaragoza, 1951). In his third exhibition for our gallery, Sinaga has selected a
number of artworks produced between 1989 and 2020, compositions that invite us to foray into the uncertainties and certainties of an uncanny,
and increasingly complex and unintelligible world. The sculpture objects comprise this show are made of concrete, wrought iron,
nickel-plated steel, plywood, applied shellac or pigmented resins, which, once again, allow this artist to blend formal investigation and philosophical
re ections concerning a world undergoing a maddening transformation.
Fernando Sinaga is of opinion that “the world in its crossroads is passively contemplating its own vanishing and disappearance. What it was,
no longer is, in this blurring perception of that which is ending. Something is coming to an end without a possible way back.”
The social trauma of the world in which we live is bluntly depicted in the many testimonies afforded by the protagonists and survivors of the
various natural disasters that have ravaged humanity recently. As collected from several news outlets, Sinaga has retrieved some testimonies
from witnesses and victrims which frame horror as a traumatic experience: “Our lives, we have left behind” [Germany, Thursday, July 15th,
2021]; “We have nothing left” [India, Friday, July 23rd, 2021]; “There have been no deaths, but there are thousands of living dead” [Grece, Limni,
Eubea, Sunday, August 15th, 2021]; “A devastated world reveals what has become irrevocable” [earthquake in Haiti and  oods in Turkey,
Saturday, August 14th, 2021].
El  n del mundo/L’origine du monde. ZKT, the artist’s most recent project, puts forth a profound re ection upon “death, amnesia, collapse
and disintegration. Disappearing conditions for life. It is the residual energy, potency in its degree zero, and the dark energy which expands
unstopped through a fragmented universe. It is the enigma, where disapparition and origin are entangled into an encrypted phoneme (ZKT).
Beyond the doors, Étant donnés.”
Ever since his 2017 exhibition in our gallery, titled El libro de las suertes y los cambios, followed by his project Pántha Rheî, Fernando Sinaga
has further explored the problems that lie at the foundations of human being’s incapacity to discern the path humanity is following, that is,
what future —if any— is waiting for us, and what are the resources that we have at our disposal to maintain some semblance of coherence
against the life and death problems that we are faced with. Works such as Lapsit exillis, Cosmograma, Los hechos son el mundo [The Facts
Are the World], Lo que no vemos [What We Don’t See], Voluntad de curación [A Will to Healing], or ZKT, stand as eloquent  agstaffs of his
perception of reality, into the arti ces of a way of understanding life.
Fernando Sinaga belongs to a generation of sculptors who came to prominence in the 80’s in Spain, whose work touches upon problems
concerning the phenomenology of art, and the perception and experience of the spectator as part of the aesthetic discourse. Time and
space are essential categories in the conception of his works alongside chance and destiny. In his sculpture work there is a intermixing
of the textual alongside a rigorous material and formal research —Sinaga has published his Escritos sobre arte 1999-2016 [Writings on
Art, 199-2016], at the CENDEAC, Murcia, and his writings and interviews have been published by Domus Artium of Salamanca on the
occasion of his exhibition Zona. He has re ected about the role of public art in a manner unparalleled in his generation, putting together
different institutional projects such as Pantallas espectrales sobre el Ebro [Spectral Screens over the Ebro River] for the International
Exhibition of Zaragoza in 2008 or El Escalofrío retiniano [The Retina’s Shudder] for the City of Arts and Sciences in 200
His artistic career has received public accolades from the Valparaíso Foundation in Almeria, the Villa de Madrid Award to the best
sculpture exhibition in Madrid in 2001, the 2010 Aragón Goya Award, given by the Government of Aragon to lifetime achievement in the
arts. For his work as a researcher, he received the 2020 María de Maeztu Award from the University of Salamanca.
His work has been presented in multiple exhibitions such as La estancia inhóspita [Inhospitable Habitation], IVAM, 2005, and Ideas K,
MUSAC, 2012, and is part of private and public collections such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS; the Instituto
Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC); Kunstsammlung der Ruhr-Universität
Bochum, Alemania; Instituto Aragonés de Arte y Cultura Contemporáneos (IAACC) Pablo Serrano de Zaragoza; Museo Patio Herreriano
de Valladolid; Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo de Badajoz (MEIAC); Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró de
Palma de Mallorca; Alexander von Berswordt-Wallrabe Collection, Bochum, Alemania; Museo Vostell, Malpartida, Cáceres; Colección
Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Huesca (CDAN); Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz (ARTIUM); Colección Banco
de España, Madrid; Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais (CACGM), Braganza; Colección Domus Artium, (DA2), Salamanca;
Fundación Coca Cola, Madrid; Fundación Caja Madrid; Museo Regional de Arte Moderno, Cartagena, Murcia (MURAM); Colección
Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza; Mincher-Wilkox Collection, San Francisco; Colección Luis Adelantado, Valencia; Colección Prosegur,
Madrid; Colección Centro