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AGUAS DEL GRAN SOL
2006/24. Speculative fiction about Bas Jan Ader's whereabouts

Map: Aguas del Gran Sol

This project, developed in installation format, consists of a series of documents, objects, photographs, videos, records, interventions, and performances that interrelate and compose a speculative narrative about the whereabouts of the artist Bas Jan Ader. The artist disappeared in 1975 while trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean with his sailboat Ocean Wave to complete the second part of his project In Search of the Miraculous. My interest in this artist arose from an investigation into the concept of uncertainty. This project began when I arrived in Berlin in 2006 when I found the publication: In Search of the Miraculous: Discovery File 143/76 in a bookstore. In 2020, the project was presented in a hotel room, exploring the notion of heterotopia, at HYBRID Art Fair Madrid (February 28, 2020–March 1, 2020). And the story closes with the spectral appearance of the sailboat in the waters off the Costa da Morte (Galicia), on June 5, 2024, during a voyage "to the end of the world" organized by the CA2M Museum (Móstoles, Madrid).
An artistic reinterpretation of Bas Jan Ader's work allows me to showcase the power of imagination in the construction of stories and images, as well as to multiply the meanings of his work.

Siren's Song

Ocean Wave (boat and nixes)

Spectre of the Ocean Wave on the Costa da Morte (Galicia)

Sunset

Sea foam

Exhibition in a hotel room. HYBRID Art Fair Madrid

2025 / info@raulhidalgo.net / IG