ADN Galeria presents the new solo exhibition of Carlos Pazos (Barcelona, 1949), titled: Y lo peor, sucedía siempre en los sueños. The exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the artist's classic project Voy a hacer de mí una estrella. To do so, he brings together various projects that play with the manipulation of the self-image and the ego as a work.

The opening, on Thursday, June 12, 2025, from 19:00, will feature the presentation of the new book by Carlos Pazos Ego (Meteorites books), presented by David G. Torres, and will be attended by the artist.

It’s been 50 years of Voy a hacer de mí una estrella, the photographic series with which Carlos Pazos hypnotized us with an attractive image of himself. In it, a solid repertoire of gestures and attitudes allowed him to reconfigure his image to radiate the appeal of a star, of a popular icon. A process of seduction whose main target was, however, Pazos himself.

Such an operation - as is typical in almost all of the artist's career - carried on the surface a marked sense of humor, despite being at heart a dramatic gesture. With works like the one mentioned above, Pazos questioned any system of representation: the image can no longer evoke any reality and the ego is born of fiction. A characteristic that would become the hallmark of much of Pazos' artistic production, thus from 1975 onwards the artist began a series of works as an artist-actor that would develop especially during the following five years and up to the present day.

Precisely, Carlos Pazos now renews the approach rehearsed fifty years ago to manipulate once again the self-image and turn it into a work of art. In this case, a new photographic series entitled Más cornadas da el arte (2025): four new vertical portraits made in collaboration with the photographer Roberto Ruiz.

With it, Pazos gives continuity to that gesture of appropriating attitudes close to Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys or Elvis himself. But this time the self conversion into a myth does not project a hope of stardom, but the opposite. The irony and the narcissistic game are still there, but in this case that self-attraction is complemented by an air of weariness rather than illusion.

Such contrast between the effervescence of the seventies and the tedium of our days gives life to part of the exhibition we present: Y lo peor, sucedía siempre en los sueños. It includes a special version of Voy a hacer de mí una estrella (1975), which brings together all the views of the series in a single photographic print. It is accompanied by the new project Más cornadas da el arte (2025). But this is not the end of the exhibition: in 2008, thirty-three years after the birth of the star, Carlos Pazos has already rehearsed the gaze on his own ego in a project that is also gathered here: Robados.

In this last work Carlos does not assume a sublimated personality. He shows himself as an individual who loses control over himself, over his image and over what he wants to transcend of himself. A work that represents that intimate zone that is exposed whether we want it to be or not. Or without ever knowing if the object of those stolen shots is aware or not that this zone is being invaded. In this way, Robados adds to the exhibition a detail that is crucial to understand the other projects: the need to discredit the opposition between a “natural” becoming of the facts and what we conceive as its opposite: the montage, the artifact or simulacrum.

In the exhibition, three more projects add to those described above and explore other avenues of the above. The work De l'ego (2023), a work made with pieces of the iconic Danish toy brand, is shown next to its current continuation: Abrillantando el ego (2025), made of metal. Finally, in the video En busca del tiempo perdido 1: Scoubidou (1976) Carlos Pazos himself is also the model on whom our gaze falls, a work dating from the same period in which the artist made Voy a hacer de mí una estrella, but which has remained unreleased until now. It is the artist himself who appears playing with a thread of scoubidou colors, in what we can perceive as a flirtation with a Peter Pan syndrome. A micro-resistance to the passage of time to which every film and pop icon is condemned.

The exhibition will open on June 12 at 7 pm at ADN Galeria (C/ de Mallorca, 205, L'Eixample, 08036 Barcelona), and will remain open to the public until August 23. The opening will start with the presentation of Carlos Pazos' new book, Ego (Meteorites Books, 2025), which brings together selected works by the artist from the last fifteen years. The volume includes texts by Martí Manen and David G. Torres, who will present the book together with the artist and editor Manel Valls.