Double Square 双方藝廊

Double Square Gallery is pleased to present Spanish artist Juan Zamora’s upcoming solo exhibition, Synapse, from May 31 to July 12, 2025. This will be the third collaboration between the artist and the gallery. Centered around a significant life experience, this exhibition showcases a collection of paintings and installations stemming from Zamora’s recent surgery, inviting viewers to reconsider the relationship between humanity and nature. Zamora blends his long-term interest in nature with poetic and philosophical contemplation, forging new emotional resonances between the audience and the natural world. The title, “Synapse,” is derived from the Greek word for “connector.” The term was first introduced by neurologists to describe how neurons link together. The Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal beautifully describes this synaptic connection as “protoplasmic kisses,” comparing it to “the final ecstasy of an epic love story”—a statement that perfectly echoes and captures the exhibitions concept.

During an emergency surgery in 2024, Zamora had a displaced intervertebral disc removed. While under anesthesia, he dreamt of traversing a bamboo forest—or maybe it was the bamboo forest passing through him. This unique dream inspired Crossing the Bamboo. The artist uses medical reports and invoices as canvases, merging images of human body tissues with lush bamboo stalks. The vibrant life of the bamboo reflects the early phase of neural development, with synapses reaching out to build connections. In Flute I, Zamora combines cells extracted from his intervertebral disc, merging them with bamboo fibers to craft a functional, playable flute. This surgical experience also heightened his awareness of the notion of “absence.”

The artist transforms and represents his observations of “absence” in his works: leaves with holes created by butterflies are embodied as a music box, and cells taken from his intervertebral disc are amalgamated with bamboo clusters that flourish freely in the gallery. Zamora perceives his time in the operating room as “a transformative pupal phase.” After surgery, he felt like a butterfly, liberated from temporal and spatial constraints, free to move between the bamboo groves in his dream and the real world. This idea echoes the notes of Ramón y Cajal: “Like the entomologist hunting for brightly coloured butterflies, my attention was drawn to the flower garden of the grey matter, which contained cells with delicate and elegant forms, the mysterious butterflies of the soul, the beating of whose wings may some day (who knows?) clarify the secret of mental life.” Through this exhibition, the artist sets his newly acquired wings in motion through his creative endeavors, blurring the boundaries between dreams, consciousness, and reality. He invites the audience to travel with him through these realms, exploring a freedom that transcends time and space while experiencing a profound sense of connection and reverence for life and nature. Synapse aims to ignite an emotional bond between viewers and nature that goes beyond reason, an ecstasy comparable to the “protoplasmic kisses” and the interconnected “synapses.”

Juan Zamora, a Spanish-born interdisciplinary artist, engages in painting, sculpture, installation, and various other media. His work builds on the foundation of scientific research, merging poetic and philosophical contemplation to explore themes related to life, nature, and the human experience. He received the Princess of Girona Foundation National Award in Spain in 2017 and was invited for residencies in New York, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, and Venice. Zamora has exhibited in numerous countries, including Spain, Germany, Portugal, the United States, China, Colombia, Italy, Nigeria, Mexico, Canada, Greece, and more.