Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon prefers to conceive its job as a “fabricator” in clear contrast with the idea of identifying himself as an artist. This self-perception is best received by those who admire the beauty and transcendence of its fabrications.
Contemporary art is always trying to break all labels, formats and properties of the matter. His role in sculpture is to manipulate this matter, “that’s a core area in what I do. ‘Matter’ and ‘stuff’ are the words I tend to use.” Deacon work returns to the material. He likes more starting with nothing and ending with some final result, rather that taking away properties and space to the matter, so we are allow to stress that fabricating stuff upon matter is his stuff.
His materiality doesn’t lurk away from some kind of transcendence. Even if he denies it, there’s something behind, some undertow of immateriality. Quite paradoxical really. Because this artist doesn’t relish to bestow abstract-philosophical meanings to its creations, as his work already is allusive and creatively suggestive, because it consciously demonstrates this without the necessity of abstract metaphors.
Is clear that his sculptures possess
this duality, they dwell a space beyond meaninglessness and meaning. As if they
try to captivate you, but also to leave you bearing witness of some kind
of unfamiliar space. In his work the opposition of terms isn’t a
contradiction, on the contrary, they develop a new space for significance, as
it happens in literature with some opposite terms that create a whole new
complex meaning, an oxymoron, a third-way of understanding art.
Roger Hiorns
Roger Hiorns is one of the greatest promises of the moment. This artist,
Turner Prize nominee of 2009, features unconventional materials beyond of all control. Recreates
reality in a manner that never has been seen, until now ...
Did you know that by mixing copper sulfate and water: bright cobalt-blue crystals are produced? Seeing Roger Hiorns's work, there's no doubt. He began using this combination, in 1996, applied to some models of Gothic cathedrals, which would end up deformed by crystallization. But it was 'Seizure' the work that took Hiorn’s crystallization process to its peak. By spilling75,000 liters of
copper sulphate in the walls, floors and ceilings of an abandoned house,
converting one floor of a dilapidated building into a magical blue universe.
Thanks to this work, Roger Hiorns was nominated to the prestigious Turner Prize (2009), although the award was finally granted to Richard Wright, the jury valuated the transformational power of this artist, describing him as a “modern alchemist."
The transformation is one of the main objectives for Roger Hiorns. Before each work, the artist studied materials and all their effects, and even if you can guess how it will develop, you never know for sure what the final result is. Hiorns materials are left free to evolve without restrictions, and the results are wonderful works that are not based on a design or on a specific esthetic intention.
Did you know that by mixing copper sulfate and water: bright cobalt-blue crystals are produced? Seeing Roger Hiorns's work, there's no doubt. He began using this combination, in 1996, applied to some models of Gothic cathedrals, which would end up deformed by crystallization. But it was 'Seizure' the work that took Hiorn’s crystallization process to its peak. By spilling
Thanks to this work, Roger Hiorns was nominated to the prestigious Turner Prize (2009), although the award was finally granted to Richard Wright, the jury valuated the transformational power of this artist, describing him as a “modern alchemist."
The transformation is one of the main objectives for Roger Hiorns. Before each work, the artist studied materials and all their effects, and even if you can guess how it will develop, you never know for sure what the final result is. Hiorns materials are left free to evolve without restrictions, and the results are wonderful works that are not based on a design or on a specific esthetic intention.
Hiorns choose materials and elements of everyday life. Many of them have nothing to do with art, but he combines them and gets them out of context to show a new and transformed reality. 'Seizure' referred to the loss of ideals, the impersonal homes, and the inability of architecture to take the pulse to everyday.
The detergent, disinfectant, perfume or fire are other materials that had shaped his disquietudes. In 'Vauxhall' (2003), he made a sewer of the Tate Britain, whose mission is to supply running water, to burst into fire. In 'Two Forms Yellow and Brown´ (1999) we see detergent sparkling bubbles sprouting from ceramic pots hanging from the ceiling.
Intangible and non-permanent media, such as perfume, give life to ephemeral oeuvres such as 'The Architect's Mother' (2003) and 'Creed' (2003), which essence is the fleeting scent of a perfume. Hiorns is interested in the name of the perfume and its ability to create an imaginary portrait of people, thus many people carries out the perfume as a statement of intentions or rooted personal belief.
But if a material is marking the path of Hiorns, that is the copper sulfate and its crystallizing effect, which also applies in 'Architect's Mother' (2003) on the engine of a BMW 8-series model. Hiorns says that "the crystallization is a state that ends in a process that seeks perfection,” which "involves a complex transformation that goes through stages of sedimentation, purification and distillation, before reaching its final stability." Thereafter, the cycle of successive transformations, which evokes life, stops, it dies. "Nothing can or will change. Immutability, but also death, both are installed."
For the artist this process resembles a little to our memory of childhood, “where you can see some parts more than the whole." Hiorns is very interested on the idea of creating a kind of esthetics in which the artist's hand is not seen; also, he’s interested on being absent during most of the transformation process of all their works. The artist demonstrates that the problem of style and esthetics are no longer a static affair.
To Hiorns the interaction of his materials have an harmonious and unpredictable turn, something in clear opposition to the idea of welding, sawing and hammering. "As the cobalt sulfate is described as autogenetic, my work is also autogenetic, and this gives some meaning to my psychological position."
His latest work is at the Arts Institute of Chicago. Again, the cobalt sulfate is present as the ultimate reaffirmation that has elevated these works to the category of art, no science nor technology. Even when it’s about turbines and pieces of spacecraft. They are a metaphor of our indifference to the machines we generate. Hiorns is interested in its ability to alienate us, to bring his works into the domain of the absurd and, in this fashion, to show us the bridge that is built between our psyche and his crystallized objects.
Robert Gober
Robert
Gober (1956) was born in Connecticut, studied at the Tyler School of
Art in Philadelphia. He lives and works in New York
City and is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery, there are some
of his most recent works in an exposition called ‘New Work: Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin,
Andreas Gursky, Martin Honert, Charles Ray, Terry Winters.’
His
work relates to domestic objects as doors, legs, chairs, beds, sinks; which
somehow have some transforming power, as they provide to humans the
potentiality to transform through this objects, going from dirty to clean
(sink), from conscious to unconscious (bed), changing from one place to other
(doors, legs), even the halls that go from one place to other are beautiful
simple metaphors of life. As recurrent themes he has nature, sexuality,
religion and politics.
Being
his series of sinks his most known pieces, which can be compared, with a twist,
to Duchamp’s: as they’re hand-made ready-mades. He’s
a really interesting artist that seems to get entangled with his own creations,
such a beautiful mind surely rejects in some degree being or feeling as an
artist.
For
Gober humour is also a basic component enmeshed with its pieces, “A lot of
times in the studio, I push the pieces until they make me laugh. It’s a way to
let people enter into the piece,” as he calls the common into question,
disquieting and disarming us with its neutral, beautiful, universal sculptures.
For him humour “it’s a disarming device, but it’s also a pleasure that comes
with the piece.” Disconcert that has the ability to turn the common into the
uncommon.
Recently opened his
expo ‘Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield’
at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Among Gober's best-known works
are large room-sized installations, sometimes incorporating running water and
theatrical lighting. His work is made by hand in his studio with painstaking
attention to detail.
Karmelo
Bermejo
In Arco 2009 edition we started to hear
with special emphasis the name of Karmelo Bermejo, his critic style, which is
far from the sermonising anti-system speeches, conquered completely both:
public and art criticism. The success of his pieces dwells in their capacity to
make us reflect on the incoherence in the world. In this manner, he doesn’t
hesitate to spend the money of grants by buying all the entrances to
a cinema to show that, even if the cinema is empty, that movie will
be screened. Other example, investing a bank loan to leave all the
audience of Art Basel Miami 09 open-mouthed, activating a pyrotechnic piece
that displayed enormous letters with the word recession. Karmelo
Bermejo doesn’t shake, as demonstrated when he used the founding granted by an
art center, solely to replace an intern component, impossible to see, of a vacuum
cleaner property of the same director of the art center. The replacement is
made with solid gold, and when the piece is over with its exhibitions, it will
go back to the director’s home. Examples as the mentioned above, show us how he
consciously deviates founds in art. Reflections of this manner is what he tries
to snatch from us. Among his highlighted works are his contributions, ‘¿Un
servicio gratuito a cambio de qué? – De nada’ (A free service in exchange of what? Nothing). To come closer to the
work of this irreverent artist, it is essential to read the title and
the subtitle of all his pieces.
His works are available at
karmelobermejo.com.
The world is full of
contradictions. Screening a film without an audience or seeing a bus
making a trip completely empty of passengers are just a couple of the ones
you've shown with your work.
For giving birth to a contradiction
there must be a moral code of some sort, a division between right and wrong.
Judging works of art morally is and has been always a mistake, repeated over
and over in the history of art criticism, thus the artworks carry-out the
function of dissuading with the distance that only the time gives. Art is
blinded in that sense, we have carte blanche.
Arrived to this point, Do you think it
is necessary for society to stop for a moment and be more critical?
That will not happen, so I did not even reflect on that matter.
That will not happen, so I did not even reflect on that matter.
'La traca final’ (The final firework) for the closing of Art Basel Miami, celebrates failure with success. An irreverent and provocative piece that focuses on the recession that haunts modern societies. Do you think art has a social responsibility?
No, art has no responsibility, not
social nor any other type. In any case, it has the responsibility of being
deeply irresponsible.
You cause great impact on the audience, opening the eyes of the viewer without great complications. Works that are very simple at a first gaze, like a photograph, achieve to open the eyes to a public that sometimes seems blind. Is it perhaps that simplicity to say things as they are what widens the impact of your work?
Although the works of art have nominal
owners, their meanings don’t. If I only give hermetic pieces that directly mean
nothing to an audience who aren’t art experts, there is no confrontation. Works
should have a journey outside the circuit of art erudites, though of course
this is a wrong path too. The trace of confusion left by some artworks in its
journey throughout the world interests me greatly.
An example: the art critic, Fernando
Castro Flórez, explains the Duchamp’s piece, 'A Secret Noise' (1916), which is
a ball of twine between two brass plates, and said: "It seems that Marcel
Duchamp, at the end of this ready-made leaved something inside, some nut,
screw, .... " But this is not exactly true, Marcel Duchamp, in a
fully conscious act, such as asking a third party, his friend, the collector
Walter Arensberg Conrad, to dip something in the ball without telling what it
was.
So this elaborated space of ignorance
from which to produce these reflections generates a whole chain of
interpretations, and moreover, they don’t even refer to the work of Duchamp
anymore, but it is only the inventiveness of whoever speaks about it. The
same art critic introduces his explanation saying that "Duchamp’s humour
was strictly superficial" and should be for him if we have
in account what he really knows.
With 'La traca final' you’ve won the prize ARCO 2010 and seeing what you did with your previous grants we assume that this money will return to do the unpredictable. Can you advance something to us?
I'll save it. Artists also have vices of accumulation and not just of squander.
In your latest work, ‘Componente interno de un electrodoméstico de la casa del director de un Centro de Arte reemplazado por una réplica de oro macizo con los fondos del Centro que él dirige’ (Internal component of an electrical appliance from the house of the director of an Art Center replaced by a solid gold replica with the Centre's funds that he runs), you present a vacuum cleaner which, at a first glance, shows nothing in special, but inside it has an internal component of 18 karat gold. Nobody can see it, but it’s there thanks to the funds from the art center. How Ferran Barenblit evaluated the final result of the investment made by the center?
Ferran Barenblit demonstrated its professionalism and commitment to art when he accepted to enrich himself by accepting my piece, just as my project required. When the exhibition is over, the vacuum cleaner will return to its place, its home, with the gold parasite inside attached forever. He could sell it or exhibit it and make profit from it as he pleases.
Actually you are part of the exhibition
‘Fetiches críticos: residuos de la economía general’ (Critic fetishes: material
waste of the economy in general) the first project by El Espectro Rojo collective.
Could you talk us about the pieces you’re exhibiting?
The vacuum cleaner piece and the other one
about Bakunin assume some sort of a relic treatment, operating in the system in
the same manner of an economical vehicle, as any work of art does. In the case
of Bakunin the piece diverted funds from private money to the editors of
anarchist publications; and in the case of the vacuum cleaner, the funds are
diverted to the director of the center of art. In the other example
of ‘Escarpias de oro macizo para sujetar obras de arte’ (Drywall solid
gold hooks to hold artworks), in which the hooks remain hidden by the
works they hold. In the expo they sustain a painting by Magdalena Jitrik, so my
piece is in a permanent process. In this fashion, depending on the context in
which they’re used, and by what it is that hangs from them, they’ll have one
meaning or another, both: the hooks and the pieces sustained by them.
You live halfway in Mexico and Spain,
¿What difference do you find between both countries about art? ¿Where your work
is best understood?
There aren’t countries that understand artworks, but only some individuals. Who are thrust into homelands, nations, even if they are plunged-in with their reluctance, as there’s not other option but to case people in their homelands, and nowhere else. In any case, artists can use their works to apply the unknown as a methodology to extend the meanings of their creations, just in the same fashion as we were talking earlier.
This symbiotic relationship between the artist and the state is very productive in many respects, for example, in ‘3,000 euros de dinero público utilizados en comprar libros de Bakunin para quemarlos en una plaza’ (2007, 3,000 euros of public money used to buy books from Bakunin to burn them in a central place) or 'Propina’ (2007, Tip, in which a fine is paid with public money, additionally giving more as a tip to the one "sanctioning"). And in some more pieces, is the state who finances the pieces. The bear-hug that I give to public funding, or the State, as when I include the origin of funding in the title of the piece, making the State an accomplice, of course. And if we assume that the financed piece is almost a matter of authorship, hence all the institutions sign their products very carefully, we conclude that the State has made the piece. He’s the author ...
There aren’t countries that understand artworks, but only some individuals. Who are thrust into homelands, nations, even if they are plunged-in with their reluctance, as there’s not other option but to case people in their homelands, and nowhere else. In any case, artists can use their works to apply the unknown as a methodology to extend the meanings of their creations, just in the same fashion as we were talking earlier.
This symbiotic relationship between the artist and the state is very productive in many respects, for example, in ‘3,000 euros de dinero público utilizados en comprar libros de Bakunin para quemarlos en una plaza’ (2007, 3,000 euros of public money used to buy books from Bakunin to burn them in a central place) or 'Propina’ (2007, Tip, in which a fine is paid with public money, additionally giving more as a tip to the one "sanctioning"). And in some more pieces, is the state who finances the pieces. The bear-hug that I give to public funding, or the State, as when I include the origin of funding in the title of the piece, making the State an accomplice, of course. And if we assume that the financed piece is almost a matter of authorship, hence all the institutions sign their products very carefully, we conclude that the State has made the piece. He’s the author ...
When
there’s talent and success ... The inevitable arises ... It is said that you
have sponsors, godfather’s, that your works are pseudo-art, even that you
appear too much in the Internet! How do you face criticism?
Appearing in front the public as a despicable and evil being is an inalienable right of the artist, something that cannot be allowed in other professions.
Appearing in front the public as a despicable and evil being is an inalienable right of the artist, something that cannot be allowed in other professions.
Cai Guo Qiang
Though Cai Guo Qiang emigrated to Japan in 1986 and
now lives in New York, he’s clearly a contemporary artist from China. He
emphasizes his origins to make evident his compromise with the culture of his
People’s Republic. He’s work is very acclaimed, even if its composed by
fireworks, gun podwer or installations with animals. He always get what he
wants: our emotions. Exposes his recent works in the MAMAC of Nize (until 28
Nov.).
His work rests on a foundation of philosophical,
aesthetic and religious traditions that go back to the origins of ancient
China. As exemple, citing his use of feng-shui
and herbal medicine as artistic devices. People thinks he’s a “new discovery
from ancient China.” Chinese art that likens with Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys
to arte povera, or younger artist as
Kcho to Matthew Barney.
We know little about the initial cultural situation
in which Cai developed its conception of life and art. He plays with our minds
willingly deceiving us sometimes, just to shape and reverse our expectations,
challenging our habits. He proves that the most ephemeral can be monumental.
Sometimes he tries to disavow any human reception, like in his work ‘Projects
for extraterrestrials,’ (1993). He’s been woring recently on spectacular
installations.
The true significance of
all his efforts is to open this sensibilities to all kind of public, you don’t
need to be a connaisseur of the
chinesse culture to understand how he looks at life from his own cultural
perspective. It’s ambitious to state that he’s trying to give a new manner for
opening new sensibilities towards art, as we always look to its work from our
own very special cultural perspective and cosmogony. Buy maybe not that
artistry-wise.
Gonzalo
Lebrija (Mexico City, 1972) is one of the artists of the Guadalajara’s “tapatía” art scene that most curiosity
awakens around. He had exposed his oeuvre in Paris, New York, Mexico, London,
Lyon, Warsaw, Girona, Canada, Beijing, San Diego, Milan, Genoa, Los Angeles,
Egypt, Berlin, Belgium ... Is not gratuitous that today is co-director of the
Office for Projects of Art (Oficina para Proyectos de Arte, OPA). Sincerely,
from Taxi is not strange that Guadalajara will become the city that better
represents the cultural and artistic core of Mexico.
Various artists and curators have
participated of OPA’s programs, names that are quite lured in any cosmopolitan
city to be fond of. Among them we can see: Anri Sala, Nic Hess, Jim Lambie,
Yutaka Sone, Pipilotti Rist, Artemio, Mario Garcia Torres, Eduardo Sarabia,
Pentti Monkonnen, Eric Wesley, Liz Craft, Patrick Charpenel, Patricia Martín,
Pip Day and Pash Buzari. Though he situates OPA’s gaze in the international news around art, he really focuses on bringing closer the international trends to the locals, something that will generate better creations from more prepared artists. A reflection of that is that the Guadalajara’s public of contemporary art is expanding, as Lebrija could confirmed at the show of Pipilotti Rist, which attracted a diverse audience and was a total hit to the OPA.
The
artistic scene of Guadalajara has given important names such as José Clemente
Orozco. And since the 1990s, Guadalajara irrupted with great power in the
avant-garde scene and its commercialization. This contemporary artistic
resurgence of Guadalajara is due to the great efforts of just a few of its
inhabitants, who know the real possibilities lying behind its prolific and fine
artists, serves as demonstration the magnificent taste of tapatío public.
Arman is one
of the most recognized and singular figures of art of the second half of the
last century. Are famous his "accumulations,"
garbage cans, cut-offs, combustion ... Arman’s provocative and scandalous projects
of the 1960s have become now unavoidable milestones in the art history of the 20th century.
Armand
Pierre Fernández began painting at the age of ten years old. He was a sculptor, painter, and engraver. In 1948 created with Yves Klein and Claude Pascal the
artistic group "Triangle", influenced by Zen Buddhism, astrology and
the work of Van Gogh. Like him,
they signed with his name only, and due to a typographical error in a gallery
that missed the "d", Arman will be his artist name forever.
This retrospective exhibition brings together 120 works, made between 1959 and 1999, marking key moments of the artist's career. From the first 'Dustbins' to the latest 'Portrait-Robot’. The selection includes those works that depict all his expressive vigour as an artist and his willingness of breaking-off.
Arman covers — and sometimes anticipates — Pop Art and Happening, Installation, Conceptual Art and even Abstract Expressionism. Thus, his works seem to be icons of our time, oeuvres that are magnificent or hilarious, dramatic or reserved.
His attitude towards art brought to life one of the most interesting avant-garde’s movements of the war, the Nouveau Realism, from the late 50s. He was one of the founding artists of this movement and one of its most active members, along with Yves Klein, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jack Villeglé, and more. Although, if his figure can not be dissociated from the Nouveau Realism, his work is sufficiently broad and complex to have influenced almost all artistic movement that characterized the second half of the 20th century.
He was a very young man when he escaped from the traditional figurative art and insisted on provoking the surprise of the audience with all kinds of elements and materials that he broke, cut, burned and accumulated on the canvas surface. His concern always focused on the subject as a reflection of emotions. In his works with numerous identical objects, Arman was to establish a new order in which every single piece relinquishes to its original function to become art.
His 'Dustbins' are the most important innovations by Arman. Before him no one had dared to use waste and claimed it as art. They are also characteristic of this new reality (which he advocated from a total disregard for convention) his spectacular "snatches", objects that change their shape and color by the application of fire.
Arman's art developed with everyday objects that became into subjects. Art is born and dies in them, leaving to who observes this a strange blend of feelings and a sort of helplessness.
This retrospective exhibition brings together 120 works, made between 1959 and 1999, marking key moments of the artist's career. From the first 'Dustbins' to the latest 'Portrait-Robot’. The selection includes those works that depict all his expressive vigour as an artist and his willingness of breaking-off.
Arman covers — and sometimes anticipates — Pop Art and Happening, Installation, Conceptual Art and even Abstract Expressionism. Thus, his works seem to be icons of our time, oeuvres that are magnificent or hilarious, dramatic or reserved.
His attitude towards art brought to life one of the most interesting avant-garde’s movements of the war, the Nouveau Realism, from the late 50s. He was one of the founding artists of this movement and one of its most active members, along with Yves Klein, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jack Villeglé, and more. Although, if his figure can not be dissociated from the Nouveau Realism, his work is sufficiently broad and complex to have influenced almost all artistic movement that characterized the second half of the 20th century.
He was a very young man when he escaped from the traditional figurative art and insisted on provoking the surprise of the audience with all kinds of elements and materials that he broke, cut, burned and accumulated on the canvas surface. His concern always focused on the subject as a reflection of emotions. In his works with numerous identical objects, Arman was to establish a new order in which every single piece relinquishes to its original function to become art.
His 'Dustbins' are the most important innovations by Arman. Before him no one had dared to use waste and claimed it as art. They are also characteristic of this new reality (which he advocated from a total disregard for convention) his spectacular "snatches", objects that change their shape and color by the application of fire.
Arman's art developed with everyday objects that became into subjects. Art is born and dies in them, leaving to who observes this a strange blend of feelings and a sort of helplessness.
KATHARINA
FRITSCH
Katharina Fritsch pertenece a la generación de
Thomas Schutte, Stephan Balkenhol, Antony Gormley y Robert Gober. Todos son
artistas que dieron un giro radical a la escultura de los años 80 siguiendo la
estela de Juan Muñoz o Isa Genzken.
La escultura icónica de Katharina
Fritsch se mueve entre la realidad y la apariencia, entre lo familiar y lo
surrealista. Sus esculturas, imágenes, instalaciones y obras sonoras apelan a
formas que hemos visto y experimentado antes; sus piezas son transformadas, a
través del color y la proporción, en formas que nos siguen siendo muy
familiares, aunque también nos dejan realmente desconcertados.
El trabajo de Katharina Fritsch está marcado por un humor sarcástico que aborda la vida cotidiana, el consumismo, la historia cultural, las ideologías, la religión o el mito. La artista logra perturbar al espectador situándole frente a inverosímiles copias de la realidad. Formas, animales y seres humanos reproducidos con una minuciosidad abrumadora, sólo para tintarlos después de colores imposibles y cambiar su tamaño por completo.
Sus esculturas son precisas y
geométricamente sorprendentes. Son
piezas moldeadas a mano que se realizan a través de un molde de yeso, aluminio
o poliéster. Las obras de Katharina Fritsch se han exhibido en el
Kunstmuseum de Basel, el Museo de Arte Moderno de San Francisco (SFMOMA), el Tate Modern de
Londres, el K21 de Dusseldorf y el Kunsthaus de Zurich.
Actualmente se puede visitar su obra
‘Cock’ en la cripta de la famosa iglesia de Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, en
Londres. Esa obra será sometida a una comisión –junto a la de otros destacados
artistas– que juzgará cuál será la escultura ganadora que ocupará el cuarto
plinto de la plaza de Trafalgar.
THE BODY IN WOMEN’S ART NOW
The Rollo Gallery of
Contemporary Art presents the second part of its exhibition series ‘The
Body in Women’s Art Now.’ With the name ‘Fluxus-Part 2’ will
open to public in this intimate gallery from London (from 8 of September until
5 of November).
‘The
Body in Women’s Art Now’ is a project that offers a feminist point of view of
contemporary art, throughout three exhibitions. ‘Flux-Part 2’ is
actually exhibited at Rollo gallery and coming soon will be in the New Hall Art
Collection. Is the continuation of ‘Embodied-Part 1’ and
will open the path to ‘Remade-Part 3’, to close this cycle of
expositions.
In
‘The Body in Women’s Art Now’ the body is the core idea. The three exhibitions
portray the body from within different perspectives related
to feminine art of this decade. ‘Flux-Part 2’ analyses
the instability of the body as a mean for
representing women. Makes visible its sexual potential at its utmost
expression; we
explore through this show the complexity of feminine identity.
The body instability and fluency, when is degraded or sublimated, is
represented by painting, drawings, animations and videos. By different means of
expressing their art, the attitude of women in relation to her body is defined
better, achieving to break through with traditionalist perspective.
This exhibition displays oeuvres made
during the last ten years by six artists. The collection of work of these
women – with different styles and careers – evidence a wonderful artistic
communication that exists between their pieces, which is something transmitted
to the observer. Among the women that form this project are some of the most
renowned artists in the world such as Tracy Emin and Cecyly Brown. Both, along
Tiina Heiska, account with a professional trajectory of more than ten years.
But also
there are emerging talents as Nathalie Djurberg, Helen
Carmel Benigson and Sarah Lederman, women that actually possess an important
artistic acknowledgement.
Nathalie
Djurberg contributes to this project with her animation videos of Plasticine
figures. Characters deformed in a blend of fantasy and corporeal desire. Her
characters aren’t endowed with conscience, so they act following savage
impulses. Seeking freedom throughout violence, obsession and lust. In her
videos you can sense the physic struggle for life in order to get some
spiritual light.
Helen Carmel Benigson, in turn,
presents a video installation that combines colour plates with sounds that
create images of the feminine body. Expressing sexuality in its most antagonising
manner. Her work puts into contrast historical and cultural stereotypes, and
presents them in harmony with its contradictions and complexities.
Sarah
Lederman creates nudes and semi-nudes portraying adolescents in well-defined
paintings; however, they end-up shedding infinite drops that represent body’s
state of fluency and freedom. Her paintings analyse the being, its fantasies
and, above all, the desire of being something that the body doesn’t allow us to
be. They try to express freedom, Lederman nudes are vulnerable and provocative,
another complexity of the body and feminine identity.
Tiina Heiska conduces us in her portraits to appreciate how adolescents
show the ambiguity of their bodies. The main characters of her pieces look
forward to having our compliance with their controverted poses that seem to be
just a game. Her paintings, at first, seem serene, but also they truly create
uncertainty. The presence of another person can be sensed, but not seen, something
that creates tension and voyeurism.
All the artists display ambiguous and complex works. Heiska,
Lederman and Benigson are focused in adolescence, a period in which identity is
continuously constructed. Djurberg, Lederman and Heiska explore the continual
change and the degradation of the body. Brown and Emin express with her works
eroticism, desire, passion and sensuality; proclaiming with pride her feminine
identity. The collection of all the oeuvres contribute positively to feminine
art and to make possible an analysis of the body in the art of our days.
‘The Body in Women’s Art Now’ emphasizes on the complex relation between women
and contemporary art, and also on how the feminine identity is always under
construction.
Thom Puckey (1948) revives the realism of sculptors as Canova,
Bartolini, Houdon o Dupré. His techniques are anachronistic and follow
closely those trends of the ends of the 18th century and beginnings of the 19th.
His pieces portray the silhouette of nude women carrying with modern weapons
and different types and sizes of knifes.
The
artist affirms that nudity in his work is the area where he allows two types of
obsessions with the female nude to overlap with each other. The “classical”
obsession and the cultural obsession which surfaced in the 1960s and which has
grown and grown ever since then. “The one where the taboo is disguised and
allowed by ‘responsible’ artistic tradition, and the other where the taboo is
pushed against and aside by ‘irresponsible’, incorrect, commercial and sexual
interests.” Puckey plays directly into these two types of approaches to the
nude, tempering the particular obscenity of the one with the particular
obscenity of the other. And allowing posed 19th century-like formalities to “bring
some sort of order to 20th and 21st century violent indecency,” as stated by
the artist.
The
presence of modern weapons in the sculptures makes them to seem “contemporary
in a cheap kind of way,” as Puckey realized. He likes this suggestion of
cheapness, he plays into it. “Chicks and guns.” At the same time, he allows the
matter to overlap with the threatened, threatening, violent female figure of
history and myth. From the Papin sisters to Diana, Lucretia, Judith, and so on.
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