All the pieces stem from a widespread sense of fear and hopelessness that has intensified in Europe in recent years: COVID, political polarization, approaching wars —and those that aren't, but we follow daily on our mobile phones— the economic crisis, the climate crisis and the resurgence of the far right.

 

Caminante no hay camino (Traveller, there is no path), the title of Machado's famous poem, runs endlessly, printed on a treadmill belt. When taken out of context, the phrase serves as a slogan for our incapability of moving forward. At the same time, Caminante no hay camino pulls on the thread of the poem's main theme, which is an ode to freedom and hope. Machado tells us that life is not predefined, but is constructed with every decision and action we take. It is an invitation to embrace the future's unpredictability and live intentionally, while letting go of the past. As someone born in the beginning of the 90s, Berenguer was raised on the principals of the “culture of effort” and neoliberal policies that promised everything is possible, and solely up to us. This false promise —which ignores social inequality and class structures— has shaped a generation that is highly cynical and frustrated. The pathless traveller becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of envisioning a future in which social, political, and economic circumstances are conducive to life.

 

Sunflowers, previously used by the artist in other projects as symbols of energy and exhaustion linked to the cycles of labour and exploitation, also appear in this solo project as symbols of nourishment, time, fertility, and most importantly, the sun: the primordial energy that makes life on Earth possible. The wax sculptures are inspired by a method of collecting and drying sunflower seeds meant for human consumption in which the blossoms are cut and pinned upright on their own stems to aid in drying and avoid mould. Through this gesture, the plant dies and the sunflower slowly dries out, maintaining some resemblance to its original form, yet being artificially forced to forever face upward.

 

The installation's title, Clockwise, emphasizes the prevailing concept of time while also obliquely referencing the present political movement's broad rightward tilt. The sunflowers pierced by their own stems embody the death of solar symbols— the end of the possibility of a life cycle. The artist’s drawings also evoke this idea; titled 5 billion years, they reference the estimated time remaining until the sun's explosion.

 

The concept of energy is an overarching theme in Berenguer’s presented works, exemplified by the drawings, through the image of the sun at the time of its explosion and the energetic and repetitive gesture of the technique used to scratch wax onto paper; by the treadmill, which is connected to an electrical outlet and serves to consume our energy with the promise that we will generate more; and, lastly, by the sunflowers, which are destined to follow the rotation of the sun and are made of wax, a substance that, when burned, transforms and releases energy in the form of heat and light.

 

In these pieces, Berenguer also explores the concept of finitude —understood as a natural and cyclical phenomenon, and therefore bound to repetition— in its various scales, from the most extreme —the end of the world— to others less distant, but no less difficult to imagine, such as the end of one’s own life, a political system, or simply, an idea.