Image: Pérez y Requena, 'Elefantes' (1996). Fotografía blanco y negro. 35 mm. Courtesy TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is presenting ‘Un loro, tres bares y dientes de oro’, an exhibition by the artist duo Pérez y Requena that examines neglected dimensions of the city through memory, territory, fiction and visual culture. Curated by Latitudes and Néstor Delgado Morales, the exhibition is on view from 3 July to 18 October 2026 at TEA.
The project approaches the city as “a fragmentary and restless archive,” according to the exhibition material. Its methodology combines research and artistic production, bringing sculpture and drawing into relation with urban dérive and installation. Rather than constructing a closed narrative, Pérez y Requena assemble partial views, associations and remnants that suggest how places accumulate histories beyond their official descriptions.
The exhibition’s title condenses that approach into a brief, apparently disconnected phrase. It emerged from the artists’ long-term dérives and archival work around the area now occupied by TEA, a site whose earlier associations included travelling shows, bars and clandestine encounters. The territory was subsequently altered by processes of urban regeneration. At TEA, the exhibition proposes a possible edition of those extended transformations while leaving the field of associations open.
The works have developed through the artists’ continued attention to rumours, discarded material and documentary remains, as well as to places that have been physically altered or demolished. The exhibition includes photographic material, architectural echoes and obsolete patterns. Its sources include images connected to local sites such as the former El Dorado bar and the Bar Niágara. A documentary photograph incorporated in 2026 records the aftermath of the demolition of El Dorado, located at the corner of Miraflores and San Francisco de Paula streets in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Across the exhibition, copying, erasure, montage, distortion and annotation turn these materials into vignettes rather than definitive records. The museum describes the resulting compositions as partial scenes and residual fragments that do not seek to illustrate or fix a single meaning, but to make an absence perceptible. Drawing functions as a method positioned between lived experience and knowledge, allowing the artists to explore the tension between straight and winding lines, remembered space and the passage of time.
Israel Pérez and María Requena studied Fine Arts at the University of La Laguna, graduating in 2000, and later completed advanced studies in painting at the same institution, where they currently teach. Their collective exhibition history includes ‘Nudos y enredos 2/5’ at the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Tenerife in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2025–26, ‘Pintura enojada’ at Travesía Cuatro in Mexico City in 2024–25, ‘Concretos’ at TEA and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León in 2022–23, and ‘No news, good news’ at CAAM in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Conquistador’ at Galería BIBLI in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2022 and ‘The Fall’ at Sala de Arte Contemporáneo in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2017.
‘Un loro, tres bares y dientes de oro’ is open Tuesday to Sunday and on public holidays from 10am to 8pm. Admission is free, and the exhibition remains on view at TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes through 18 October 2026.
