Fabián Schalekamp – “The Heart of the Forest”

Temporary exhibition

Espai Cor

The work that Fabián Schalekamp (Palma, 1964) has been developing for years, in an understated manner, is an example of rigour and coherence within the context of Balearic art.

Born into a family of intellectuals —his father, Jean Schalekamp, was a renowned writer, and his mother, Muriel D. Hess, a visual artist— he was brought up with principles of respect for nature that, over time, have become the backbone of a body of work spanning sculpture, drawing, photography, intervention, installation and environmental art, and which has always been reluctant to exhibit itself, undoubtedly convinced that the sole reason for a piece’s existence was its connection with the environment, and that any other argument apart from this principle was incidental and therefore dispensable.

“When I enter the forest, I do not hear the birds, but the beating of the roots. Beneath my feet extends an invisible network that shares water, nutrients and memory. Nothing lives alone. The forest exists because each of its elements supports the others in a silent and persistent balance,” Schalekamp tells us. Branch by branch, he forms an imaginary forest —an evocation of the inner forest we all carry within us and too often forget— which serves both as a refuge and as a space for reflection, inviting us to remember that beneath every landscape there is always a web of relationships that makes life possible. Perhaps protecting the forest does not consist solely in preserving its trees, but also in recovering an awareness of our interdependence with everything around us. The heart of the forest is not a place; it is a way of rethinking the world: caring, connecting and understanding that what happens beneath the ground also sustains our future.

These minimal structures, as graceful as they are ethereal, do not impose their form on the space, but enter into dialogue with it —with the ceiling, the walls and the floor— through modesty, sometimes through silence, and always through respect. Their open, light and irregular lines seem to trace ephemeral geometries that seek neither permanence nor monumentality. They are small architectures of the moment, minimal places that nurture an unimaginable balance and that, through their lightness, help remind us that nature is not a passive entity, but a fabric of constantly changing relationships. They are invitations to imagine other ways of coexisting with the environment: slower, more attentive and more humble.

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Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9 am to 8.30 pm; Saturdays, 9 am to 7 pm; Sundays, 10 am to 7 pm