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Antoni Abad began his career as a sculptor in 1979 by moving away from traditional techniques. Inspired by movements such as Supports/ Surfaces, which placed equal value on the material, the creative gesture and the finished piece, he worked with sculpture as an element that can be manipulated, in which process and sequence are essential. Using polyurethane foam, he created forms that, starting from an original volume, were successively transformed yet kept the same mass, in contrast to the traditional direct carving technique of removing material.
His first presentation of this type of work was in 1986, at the Miró Foundation’s Espai 10 in Barcelona, as part of the series De la causa i de l’objecte (On Cause and Object). Here we show two photographic series corresponding to the exhibitions Actitudes (Attitudes), organised by the Spanish Ministry of Culture’s Youth Institute in 1986 at Madrid’s Velázquez Palace (16 images); and the one that took place at London’s Chisenhale Gallery in 1987 (24 images). Starting from an initial block, he began to make L-shaped cuts, which follow one another internally to produce a sculptural
work of tentacles. The artist himself described the process: ‘Each cut is definitive. The possibility of starting over is ruled out. The block crumbles, causing a mutation of the form. I can order the di!erent stages of this transformation in sequence. I can even, taking advantage of the properties of the material used, recover the initial form.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio