Before Everything
18 September 2010 – 9 January 2011
CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo
Av. Constitución, 23
28931 Móstoles,
Madrid. Spain
www.ca2m.org
Before Everything aims to penetrate into the production of art in Spanish today through the work of fifty-six artists. The exhibition, which occupies the entire Center, does not set out to offer a totalizing vision of the “here and now.” Rather, gives a greater visibility, for the first time in such a condensed approach, to forms of work that have been developed in specific locations, in this context, in over the last twenty years.
The project conceptual framework has been articulated around the notion of “expectation,” understood as both as a mediator hinge between the past, present and future, as well as a reasonable possibility of something about to happen. Moreover, the scope of expectations also refers to the logic of the consumption of culture and our relationship with art, based on the continuous generation of future projections.
One of the main intentions of the project is to explore threads of continuity between the practices of different generations in order to build bridges and to evidence resonances in the present. These connections should not be understood as straight lines for the transmission of knowledge, neither as traditions nor legacies. Instead, as the philosopher Gilles Deleuze would say, as lightening-shaped paths that address the hybrid, mixed genesis of contemporary practices.
The exhibition Before Everything operates as a place in which to relate an array of potentials that come together to generate new nexus and meanings – formal, semantic, affective, etc.– between the artists and the works the exhibition gathers. The aim here is not to identify, but rather to conceive an exhibition not as the representation of a context but as a platform from which to act on that context. That is, an exhibition as a generator of context.
The exhibition, which includes a great many works produced specifically for the occasion, also entails a series of parallel devices. For instance, in June of 2010 the reader “Before Everything–Summer Readings” was published. The publication included reflections by seven different authors on the notion of “the new,” “taste,” “failure,” and “convention,” conceptual pillars of the project that, one way or another, are involved in the overarching idea of expectation.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue designed by ferran ElOtro Studio with essays by Peio Aguirre, Sofie van Loo, as well as the contribution by the curators Aimar Arriola and Manuela Moscoso, will be published. This publication also contains texts by seventeen authors on each of the artists and works in the exhibition.
ARTISTS
Ignasi Aballí; Lorea Alfaro; Txomin Badiola; Antonio Ballester Moreno; Erick Beltrán; Bestué / Vives; Rafel G. Bianchi; Carles Congost; June Crespo; Discoteca Flaming Star; Patricia Esquivias; Jon Mikel Euba; Esther Ferrer; Nuria Fuster; Dora García; Fernando García; Rubén Grilo; Lilli Hartmann; Daniel Jacoby; Jeleton; Fermín Jiménez Landa; Adrià Julià; Dai K.S.; Tamara Kuselman; Daniel Llaría; Erlea Maneros Zabala; Pablo Marte; Fran Meana; Asier Mendizabal; Jordi Mitjà; Momu & No Es; Julia Montilla; Itziar Okariz; Antonio Ortega; Kiko Pérez; Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa; Gabriel Pericàs; Paloma Polo; Sergio Prego; Wilfredo Prieto; Tere Recarens; Red Caballo; Alex Reynolds; Xavier Ribas; Carlos Rodríguez-Méndez; Francesc Ruiz; Xabier Salaberria; Jorge Satorre; Javi Soto; Julia Spínola; Sra. Polaroiska; Alain Urrutia; Isidoro Valcárcel Medina; Azucena Vieites; Oriol Vilanova; WeareQQ.
CA2M Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11:00 – 21:00 hrs.
Closed on Monday
www.ca2m.org
*Image above:
Dora García, “It is not the past, but the future, that determines the present” (Golden sentences), 2003 – 2009. David Roberts Collection, London; Asier Mendizabal, CBS/FSLN-1, 2004-2007. Courtesy of the artist.
