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Mario Toral Museum

2014
Santiago,
Chile
Competition

Architects  Alfredo Andia 

                   Carlos Peña

                   Gregorio Vasquez

                   Hermann Rosenthal

Bioclimatic Design: Thomas Spiegelhalter

The works of Mario Toral are, without a doubt, related to us perhaps more to an innermost part of us; his paintings put us somewhere we cannot place, but one which is tremendously familiar.

Mario Toral points to the ground; the here and now on this earth; the atmosphere, the lapses of light; of faces tumbling down a cliff … on to something like a mass of land, to a precise American silence that pleads a promise.

His works point toward a part we cannot fully remember, but which we know floats there on all sides.

Just to think that when we in the Toral Foundation wield a large amount of options, we quickly realize that the works of Mario Toral do not relate to something tangible - less still to books on architecture; quite the contrary, the works need a territory; one we can cross.

Mario's paintings for us Chileans are very special because they are works of art that we have been very familiar with, even before we attended workshops; they came before books, publications or Internet sites that led us toward a design.

We believe that the location of the foundation is not the perfect art classroom; we believe, after conversations with Mario in his home, that the foundation should house a promise that is the door to something more radical in the city.

The foundation should give us something more; we believe that his works should be housed in a boundless space: for the body, for art, for encounters, somewhere we can stay so as to open ourselves up and feel things we thought we had forgotten.

Only in an abyss can we re-encounter what we have forgotten.

                                                                   CAN BE

                                                                                       only
                                                                                                         the Abyss
                                                                   raging
             
                                                                                    whitened
                     
                                                                                                          stalled
                                      
                                                                                                                                    beneath the desperately
                                                                                                                                    sloping incline

                                                                                                                                                                  “A Throw of the Dice” Stephane Mallarme

Mario Toral Plano.jpg
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