Los Sujetos (The Subjects)
Cabello/Carceller, Francesc Ruiz, Pepo Salazar + Salvador Dalí
9 May–22 November 2015
Preview: 6–8 May
Opening: 6 May, 11.30h
Spanish Pavilion
Giardini
Venice
The artists Cabello/Carceller, Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar, under the guiding light of Salvador Dalí, will serve up the main course in the Spanish Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The curator Martí Manen has orchestrated a collective project where Dalí will be present as a subject, though not represented by his work. The show reinterprets and repositions Dalí from a contemporary perspective, channelled through the voices of Cabello/Carceller, Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar.
In order to explore Dalí, the Spanish Pavilion does not need to show his paintings. Instead, it will explore the Dalí of interviews and words, Dalí the subject. It will reveal Dalí through other voices, those of artists who are conceptually linked to him and to each other. Using the sensuality of the persona-subject as its point of departure, the exhibition will go on to explore other subjects that also lend themselves to extraordinary interpretations. With Dalí providing the premise and setting the tone, Cabello/Carceller, Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar will present three artistic proposals exploring gender issues, the power of mass media and the relationship with object-image culture. Salvador Dalí is contextualised in the present as an artist who understood and knew how to use the media to his own ends, an artist in constant symbiosis with both public and private.
Cabello/Carceller have designed an artistic proposal that revolves around the idea of multiple identities and the possibility of non-definition. Their performance, film and installation work, rooted in feminist stances and queer theory, will offer a critical insight into the definition of identity and the political fight of the individual. Francesc Ruiz will create a space for surreal, sensual narration, using comics as his working context. This artist’s presence will be twofold, for in addition to his work displayed inside the pavilion, Ruiz will occupy the entire Giardini at the Venice Biennale for the first week of the event. The spirit of Dalí will also be present in the legendary artist’s own newspaper. At the Spanish Pavilion, Pepo Salazar will present a work in keeping with his particular modus operandi, an atomized creation that mixes moments and types and creates a framework in which all options are possible. Like Dalí, Pepo Salazar expands the range of artistic action by flouting conventions and cultivating a profound knowledge of what it means to work in the field of art. His section of the pavilion invites us to consider the difficulty of access as a sensual option, the linguistic weight of materials, and impact as strategy. Salazar’s project for the pavilion is tied in with Salvador Dalí’s Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and of the Rights of Man to His Own Madness (1939).
About the artists
Cabello/Carceller have participated in exhibitions such as Global Feminism (Brooklyn Museum, New York), Fiction and Reality (MMOMA, Moscow Museum of Modern Art), BB4 On Producing Possibilities (Bucharest Biennale), the Latin American Visual Arts Biennial (Curitiba), Re.act Feminism (Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and other venues), Genealogías feministas (MUSAC, León) and The Screen Eye of the New Image (Casino Luxembourg).
Francesc Ruiz has been featured in exhibitions such as Invisible Violence (Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade), Kaboom! Komik in der kunst (Weserburg Museum, Bremen), Arqueológica (Matadero, Madrid), The Last Newspaper (New Museum, New York), The Graphic Unconscious (Temple Gallery, Philadelphia), El Mal de Escritura (MACBA, Barcelona), Sequelism (Arnolfini, Bristol), Artificial Nature (MOCA, Shanghai) and Everyday Utopias (La Centrale Électrique, Brussels).
Pepo Salazar has participated in exhibitions such as Pop Politics. Activismos a 33 revoluciones (CA2M, Móstoles), Prix Altadis (Palais de Tokyo, Paris), Values (Art in General, New York), Cartografías del arte contemporáneo en Euskadi (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao), Institutional Flirts (FLACC, Ghent), Vídeos de ocasión (Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona) and Basado en hechos reales (ARTIUM, Vitoria).
The Spanish Pavilion is realized under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain in collaboration with Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action (AC/E).
International press contact
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www.renzomadrid.com
Mónica Iglesias / monica [at] renzomadrid.com / T +34 620 421 253
Ada Tullo / ada [at] renzomadrid.com / T +39 349 267 4900
