We are pleased to announce the fourth installment of the exhibition Carta blanca series, featuring Chelo Matesanz, who will present a project in collaboration with Manuel Mata, Ventura Pérez, and Ander Sagastiberri.

When we talk about a garden, we’re talking about two gardens: the garden we try to create and the garden that simply happens.

The garden we try to create reflects a person’s idea of what a garden should be. A rosebush here, a tree there, a uniform lawn, and so on. The garden that just happens is a negotiation between a person’s vision and the world’s resistance.

A plot of land is not a blank canvas. There are environmental factors, characteristics inherent to the land, and spatial limitations. The earth has a mind of its own and plays favorites. The tree you want to plant suddenly rots away for no apparent reason, while another, planted in the same spot, shoots up like a rocket. The garden we hoped would yield orange juice now offers us only lemon juice. The cherries vanish into thin air because of the birds. Dandelions and molehills appear among the grass. Brambles peek over the fence. A family of rats settles among the roots of the rosebush.

Generally speaking, killing rats, moles, and birds is the solution many people turn to in order to impose the garden they envision over the garden that actually exists. It’s very much like doing everything possible to ensure that a painting doesn’t look like a painting. In any case, force is only a temporary measure. We must play the hand we’ve been dealt, and the reality is that the only way to create a garden is by negotiating with the land. It’s a process that involves compromises and changes of direction, but one that also leads to discoveries and tools.

Artists have focused on engaging with the resistance inherent in their respective artistic formats and conceptual paths. Sometimes, that resistance yields resources (it’s possible, for example, to prepare a medicinal broth from wild plants). Other times, it produces monsters (it’s possible, for instance, to eat a glowing mushroom and kick the bucket).

Things grow in the garden that no one has planted emerges from the friction between broth and poison, between the garden we try to create and the garden that simply happens.

(Things grow in the garden that no one has planted. Text by Manuel Mata. June 2026)