|
Galer�a Helga de Alvear: MONTSERRAT SOTO : Dato primitivo JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER : Recent Reconstructions - 13 Nov 2008 to 10 Jan 2009 Current Exhibition |
||||
|
Montserrat Soto
Lugar de silencios, 2008 Video installation |
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
MONTSERRAT SOTO Dato primitivo Galerma Helga de Alvear 13th November 2008 - 10th January 2009 Opening hours: 11 am - 2 pm & 4:30 - 8:30 pm. Opening: Thursday 13th November 2008 at 8:00 pm For her latest show at Galerma Helga de Alvear, Monserrat Soto dissects artists creative processes in two video works. In "Lugares de silencio", the first of the two, the poet Dionisio Caqas inhabits a physical and at once mythical space as he searches for the exact word. His physical location is on the other side of a wall, in a space we imagine to be labyrinthine though we have no access to it. We know he is there because of his voice, because of the omniscient recital and, from time to time, we catch fleeting glimpses of him though a kind of grille in the wall. The poet wanders through the space, rambling around as if his physical movements were a kind of translation of mental paths. As if, in walking, he could reproduce the paths his mind takes as it searches, explores and tries out different possibilities until he comes up with the precise word required to complete the poem. The spectator is thus given an insight into the secret of creation; it is almost like observing the artist in his place of work. Only that the true place of work of an artist is in his mind. Montserrat Soto represents this mythical space of creation as a labyrinth whose paths we cannot altogether understand. However much we might intuit them, they are totally inaccessible to us. Yet it is also a closed place, almost like a prison from which the artist himself cannot find his way out. Cut off from the rest of the world, beyond the wall and the grille there is a place we can imagine, where the magic of the process of creation takes place. The creative process in "Dato primitivo 2" is not only individual but also collective as the artist has to communicate his creative act to others, to the other. This time, we see the musician Chico Ocaqa preparing his latest album. After first composing his new songs on his own, it is now time to work with the musicians he is going to record with. He has to transmit what he has already created, to explain to the others what he has imagined in his head. Each note, each arrangement, each variation, has to be transmitted outside himself, outside his interior, with the added difficulty that music is the most abstract and intangible of the arts. Moments when the composer and the musicians return once and again to what they have created are contrasted, counterpoised and repeated on two parallel screens. It is a process of transmission but also of filtering and subtle nuances. With each clarification and explanation the work of art is gradually defined and given shape, being transformed from the simple humming of the composer into the shared execution of the whole group. From creation to transmission and public execution. From the solitude of the creator to the multitude of the spectator JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER Recent Reconstructions Galerma Helga de Alvear 13th November 2008 - 10th January 2009 Opening hours: 11 am - 2 pm & 4:30 - 8:30 pm. Opening: Thursday 13th November 2008 at 8:00 pm With this one-person show at Galerma Helga de Alvear in Madrid, Johannes Wohnseifer (Cologne, 1967) is exhibiting his work for the very first time in Spain. Wohnseifer finds the seeds for his work in history, both the history of Germany as well as his own, whether personal memories or those of his generation. To this end he develops a strategy primarily grounded in the appropriation of historic and cultural symbols, especially brand logos, which he infuses with an ironic and affective, almost melancholic mood. Nonetheless, while at first glance close to Pop this practice is ultimately revealed as purely conceptual. His mission is to re-construct this memory, marked by times past. "Three Brown Boxes" looks almost like a readymade: three totally banal and anodyne boxes from Braun electrical appliances are (in a play of words) painted the same brown used by the German army and placed in perspex structures as sculptures. The end result cuts across the tradition of 20th century avant-garde sculpture as well as both the collective memory and the recent history of Germany. "All the Colours of a Year" works in much the same direction, yet on a more personal level. An environmental impulse prevents Wohnseifer from throwing away the paint rollers he has been using throughout the span of a whole year. Accumulated in a plastic container, all that remains is to place it on a plinth to remind us of Gerrit Rietveld's designs and constructions. The paintings in the exhibition share a similar origin and result yet, on this occasion, they remit exclusively to the personal memory of the generation of the artist in the covers of the 1980s English pop group The Smiths. At the time, the group used existing well-known images of people from their own imaginary, and now Wohnseifer repeats the same design but replacing them with people from the universal imaginary of British culture. Finally, "Elevated Broken Circle" represents the readymade in its pure undiluted state: a circular concrete structure found in the street is cast in aluminium and raised on handmade yellow prisms. Johannes Wohnseifer has shown his work at Sprengel Museum in Hanover, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Witte de With Center in Rotterdam and MUSEION in Bolzano. For further information, contact the gallery at the address below. borja @ helgadealvear.com galeria @ helgadealvear.com Galerma Helga de Alvear Doctor Fourquet, 12 28012 Madrid Tl. 91 468 05 06 Fax 91 467 51 34 |
||||
re-title.com
International contemporary art
SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS
SIGN UP for ARTIST MEMBERSHIP
SIGN UP for GALLERY MEMBERSHIP
Click on the map to search the directory