The CCA Andratx residency has four studios and has been active for more than two decades, hosting countless artists who stay, on average, for one month in Andratx—a privileged setting, very calm, and home to a few friendly goats that wander around and curiously observe (and allow themselves to be observed) near the building where so much takes place. And which now also hosts this exhibition.

The title comes from the famous 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan, a musical milestone for its experimentation and its transition from folk music into something that did not yet exist as a genre before the eleven songs that make up the album.

The scale of CCA Andratx’s large galleries is very present in this exhibition. Most of the works are small in relation to the vastness of the walls. You have to move closer to see a piece, then move again to reach the next one. I don’t know who said, “the longer the walk / the better the thoughts,” but staying longer in an exhibition undoubtedly has its advantages. It’s not about seeing more, but about perceiving better. It’s less about rushing through a visit and more about inhabiting the exhibition space—in essence, lingering along the way, enjoying the detours.

I have always liked the praise that Federico Fellini gave to his colleague—and in many ways mentor—Roberto Rossellini. Fellini said that Rossellini “filmed the air,” meaning not only the characters and objects, but the air that separates them: the empty space between the elements that make up his film scenes. Walking through the CCA galleries, a certain emptiness is easy to perceive. An absence we move through as we approach a piece, then shift again toward the next encounter. A void worth inhabiting, even briefly, to free ourselves from the constant stream of input our hurried lives impose on us.

Emptiness is essential for observing, for perceiving, for paying attention to the works and entering into dialogue with them. The viewer needs to carry within themselves a certain blank space—a space free of distractions, cleared of thoughts both useless and repetitive. 

Just as it is necessary to empty oneself to make room for love, it is necessary to empty oneself in order to focus and truly attend to a work, a text, or a song. Only then can the works and texts in this exhibition be heard—and taken advantage of.

Encounters are more likely to occur when we are empty—or at least quiet—spaces. This project stems from the concept of emptiness explored through two opposing poles: beginning with Karin Fisslthaler’s works, which act as a leitmotif of the exhibition, presenting dense accumulations of photographic images taken from The New York Times, and extending to the monumental work Ocean Europe by Ismar Čirkinagić, which, through a complex photographic process, strips European flags of all the graphic information that makes them powerful symbols of nation-states, returning them to their essence as pure colors. In both cases, the artists offer an effective process of subtraction that allows us to take refuge—or at least distance ourselves—from the endless stream of images that constantly overwhelm us.

Addressing themes such as perception, attentive reading, and slow movement in an exhibition is about being on the lookout—being attentive and open to encounters. It is no coincidence that Gilles Deleuze pointed to the possibilities—even joyful ones—of encounters not with people, but with works of art, films, music, and so on. These occur especially when we are receptive, often on weekends (those pleasant Sundays of awakened attention), when we set out to encounter the “otherness” that inhabits any work. When asked why he went to the movies or exhibitions almost every week, and whether this effort was about seeking pleasure, Deleuze replied:

 “I think not—well, yes, of course, it involves pleasure. But not always. I think of it more as being on the lookout. In a way, I don’t believe in culture, but I do believe in encounters—and encounters are not with people. People always think encounters happen with other people, and that’s terrible. That’s part of culture: intellectuals meeting each other, that whole mess of debates—infamous stuff. Encounters are not with people, they are with things, with works. I encounter a painting, I encounter a movie, I encounter music. I understand what an encounter is; when people want to add meeting themselves or others, it no longer works. That’s why encounters with people are so disappointing—often catastrophic. But when I go to the movies on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m not sure I’ll have an encounter, but I go out, I stay alert: is there something to be found—a painting, a film? And then
it’s wonderful.”

Through Gernot Wieland’s videos, we continue our journey home. We explore what a life has been and is, moving through memory, finding recollections that activate stories and narratives, where the difference between reality and fiction no longer matters because we are looking inward: language as a shrub that surrounds the subject and always accompanies it.

The videos by Karin Fisslthaler and Josep Maynou emphasize encounters and chance, while the playful little monkeys in the works of Paul Pretzer and Matti Schulz observe us curiously as we move closer to look more slowly, more attentively. Robert Davis’s paintings are made with ashes, always on the verge of disappearing like a starry night, or slipping into oblivion like Bianca
Pedrina’s cigarette butts.

Fantastic, mysterious, and captivating worlds sometimes take us to distant places, and other times to very nearby ones. We find them in the photographs of Katrin Lock & Tim Brotherton and Martin Parr. The works of Andreas Bunte, Ferran García Sevilla, David Stjernholm, Meng Tong, and Robin Ward reward prolonged attention. A utopian reading of spaces (Bunte), objects that merge into one another (Stjernholm) or fold back onto themselves (Tong) invite us to extend the journey until we glimpse other planets (Ward). Everything comes back, but the wheel keeps turning (Sevilla).

Similarly, the songs and texts present in the exhibition galleries project possible ways of understanding the journey and the empty spaces between one stop and the next, between one thing and another. They are there, available to the viewer to generate encounters—some expected, others less so. It is likely that, on this journey back home, we have not taken the fastest route; we
will probably arrive late.

Francesco Giaveri, 2026