A SCULPTOR: JUAN BORDES

SEA SHAPES

The Canary sculptor, Juan Bordes, has brought the seabed and the Playa de las Canteras to the ‘Alfredo Kraus’ Auditorium and Canary Convention Centre. Bordes, first and foremost, has entered into empathy with Tusquets. But his main loyalty is to Nestor to whom he pays homage in a sculpture called ‘Paseando por la Barra’ (Walking along the Reef). Bordes conceived of the building as a ‘symbolic sea stage’ where the curtain rises on the gigantic Mermaid at the front entrance, with strong reminiscences of the fish to be found in this area, and falls over the disconcerting head of Medusa on the seafront façade.
Bordes alighted on the small fish known as the ‘caboso’ in the rockpools at Las Canteras beach. He transformed this small lively fish into an anthropomorphic monster with great bulging eyes and lush lips of the type which rugged sailors, long at sea, spun tales on tavern-long nights. He found that if he swelled the proportions of the fish in aluminium and steel, it would become the perfect guardian for the entrance.
The Medusa, which is also in bronze and steel, stares out over the great window onto the Atlantic. The dangerous eyes, about to be raised, are ready to petrify the beautiful Atlantic waves. Atlantis is suspended in mythical time in much the same way as the sculptor casts his spell on us and transforms the very possibilities of Nature herself.
The Scorpiofish, arched in steel, leaps out of the depths of the Ocean and up onto the windvane aloft the building. The small octopus and the enormous stingray on one of the terraces complete the outer decoration.
The sea is also evoked on the interior of the building. The bronze engravings over the stairway accessing the Symphonic Hall recreate a stroll along the Reef at Las Canteras between rockpools, shells, eels and crabs, shoals of tiddlers and the enormous mussel which rises out of the Compass Rose. You can almost catch the sea breeze. Again, the wooden panels around the Symphonic hall portray nude female figures in a symbolic harmonisation of the Venetian Lido and the Beach at Las Canteras.