On The Road

Catalogue of the exhibition On the road, curated by Gloria Moure. (Santiago de Compostela, 27 June – 30 November 2014 to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Francis of Assisi’s trip to Santiago de Compostela)

Artists: Francis Alÿs; Giovanni Anselmo; Jorge Barbi; Lothar Baumgarten;Joseph Beuys; Alighiero Boetti; Christian Boltanski; Marcel Broodthaers; John Cage; Mircea Cantor; Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller; Tacita Dean; Jimmie Durham; Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg; Félix González-Torres; João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva; Roni Horn; Annika Kahrs; Amar Kanwar; Yves Klein; Jannis Kounellis; Antón Lamazares; Richard Long; Aníbal López; Piero Manzoni; Anthony McCall; Mario Merz; Nam June Paik; Giuseppe Penone; Perejaume; Caio Reisewitz; Robert Smithson; Antoni Tàpies; Lawrence Weiner and Franz West.

Francis of Assisi, constitutes the starting point for the research into contemporary art included in this publication. A central figure of European culture, he challenged the world he lived in. On the one hand, he represents a radical criticism of the dominant forces of his time and, on the other, an energetic response to the demands of the situation. His clashes with the hierarchy of his day render him an inevitable benchmark in many of the subsequent socio-cultural movements.The book’s structure is intrinsically bound to the ideas that drove the attitude of St. Francis of Assisi, which remain enormously relevant even today: human dignity in the face of poverty, the increased value of sensitive knowledge as opposed to the supremacy of a purely instrumental reason – entropy as a means of knowledge (the appreciation of nomadic life in a world rooted in a sedentary lifestyle), landscape as part of the human quality (appreciating reality, as a vast, complex and unstable link in which nothing can be external).• 35 contemporary artists present their works for this project.• The book includes specific works by Francis Alÿs, Tacita Dean, Jimmie Durham, Richard Long, Anthony McCall, Perejaume, and Lawrence Weiner, among others.• Beautifully designed and produced, the book includes some insertions specially created by the artists.