Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

⧜, 2020

Installation view: Abundant Futures. Works from the TBA21 Collection, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía C3A, Córdoba, Spain, 2022
Photo: Roberto Ruiz

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

Collection

Abundant Futures

EN/ES

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
⧜, 2020

Installation with four Kriska aluminum curtains, aluminum rails, powder-coated steel frames
450 x 1455 x 780 cm

Daniel Steegman Mangrané’s installation, with the puzzling title ⧜ (incomplete infinity), serves as the access point to “Abundant Futures,” inviting visitors into the world of many worlds that the exhibition unfolds. A long, cavernous tunnel, made of cutouts from Kriska aluminum curtains, dramatizes the rituals of entrance, movement, and passage, reminding us to be good guests as we enter the worlds of others. Brightly colored chains, typical of the south of Catalunya, where the artist spent his childhood, are suspended from the ceiling. As visitors traverse the four consecutive layers of aluminum chain curtains, they are subtly enticed to negotiate their movements through the surrounding space. They can choose between either opening a path against the resistance of the chain links, causing their disturbance in the otherwise ordered mesh and triggering their tinkling metallic sound, or crossing the open gaps in silence. While the curtains hang vertically in a tidy, regular pattern, the passages cut through them are amorphous and asymmetrical. The title ⧜ mathematically expresses that two variables are proportional to one another. It proposes an interplay between fullness and void, continuity and interruption, which appeals to liminal states of transit. According to Steegmann Mangrané, who has been using numerical signs and symbols for artworks, language at times falls short of communicating meaning. Still, this lack does not necessarily imply a reality that is any less valid.