Ferrari de 1930

Angel Orensanz in Coimbra: From the River Mondego to the Atlantic Ocean

To mark the end of his exhibition at the Coimbra Water Museum,Angel Orensanz and curator Manuel Carmo drove a 1930's Ferrari from the front entrance to the museum in the banks of the river Mondego to the nearby seashore of the Atlantic Ocean, just a few miles away. "Water Dreams" has been seen by thousands of visitors from the city of Coimbra itself and from the entire country.

The Orensanz exhibition opened with the conceptual sculptural piece "River of Fire" in which several boats participated in a display and juxtaposition of water and fire. In that first piece he developed the antinomy of water as a threat and a relief. In this last intervention he is bringing up the semantics of water as the primal perspective of all motion and its eventual absorption into the galloping ocean. The Ferrari, an original from the 1930's, brings the utopian mind of the early 20th century when the automobile in the hands of the Italian engineers and artists became an icon of individual empowerment, speed and energy. Orensanz and Carmo moved by road in close parallel to the river Mondego, approaching the boats installation of Orensanz in some points of their drive, until reaching the Ocean open, and endless like a universe of water. The automobile was all the time decorated with the circles and tarpaulins of Orensanz, making it an imaginary dinosaur.