After working in the fashion and the audiovisual sectors, emerging artist Ignasi Monreal (born in Barcelona) comes to Rome with a new project, following his first exhibition of oil paintings in Madrid. Here he considers the implications of the relationship that binds us to the new gods of technology – the Internet, first and foremost, but also the key to accessing it: the router.
The Internet, an ethereal, intangible element that has become part of our everyday lives – and which we can no longer do without.
It is with us everywhere we go, invisible but omnipresent. And yet it has a physical manifestation – the Wifi router, which is granted neither significance or aesthetic dignity in spite of being available everywhere.

Through an interactive installation the artist aims to reestablish the central, almost immeasurable role which the need to be connected has assumed in our contemporary lives, endeavouring to render something as immaterial as the Internet as “present” as possible.

Created in collaboration with Jack Wooley, a London-based artist and ceramicist, and Bernardo Moleón, a former Strategic Planner at Apple, the Hypercube sculpture delivers a perfect harmony of art, craftsmanship, new media and the high-tech, establishing connections between the exhibition’s physical and intangible spaces.

The work on show is the fluid result of a mixture of various elements: the latest technological innovations, particularly the rise of 5G mobile networks, and the artist’s Spanish cultural background, evident not only in the use of ceramics but also in the employment of religious iconography – and the piece’s allusion to Salvador Dalí’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) is interesting in this regard.
There are also autobiographical touches, such as the visual reference to the Aziziye Camii in London, a former cinema that was turned into a mosque in 1983, and which was opposite the house where the artist lived for several years.

A critical essay written for the occasion will feature Dobrila Denegri in conversation with Ignasi Monreal, Jack Wooley and Bernardo Moleón.

Read and download the exhibition’s press release.