During almost twenty-five years of career, Los Carpinteros have experimented with almost all disciplines -sculpture, photography, drawing, installation, video- using an enormous diversity of materials: wood, brick, paper, metal, plastic, concrete, fabric, among others. In all cases, his works challenge the public, provoking a real intellectual check, a blow to their mental, logical and rational architecture. Apparently, this is a formal issue, for example, when artists manipulate or deform objects.However, in most cases, their works do not really present any physical change, they simply appear displaced from their context or their natural state. "All our figurative operations are regulated by convention", says Umberto Eco. The rupture of meaning is, then, the great (de)construction of these artists who, of course, have self-appointed themselves 'carpenters' to contradict -though never totally- the function of a trade centered on the production of useful objects. In addition to their best-known pieces -Sala de juntas, Catedral, Clavos torcidos- there are practically unknown works such as Concreto roto, Bola de pelo or 20 gentes, as well as unpublished pieces such as Surround with Sound Your Ass and Tres casi guitarras. The exhibition also emphasizes the work and experimentation processes behind the artists' work. La cosa está candela proposes to explore the work of Los Carpinteros from a semiotic perspective and to understand their entire production as a system of signs, ambivalent, contradictory, paradoxical and, nevertheless, tremendously subversive. Humor is their strategy.
