Valentin Carron, FOD, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea,
Eva Rothschild and Gert & Uwe Tobias
December 12, 2009–February 28, 2010
La Conservera
Contemporary Art Center
Avenida de Lorquí, s/n.
30562, Ceutí (Murcia).
Tel.: (+34) 868923132
Third series of exhibitions
December 12th 2009 – February 28th 2010
Opening: Friday December 11 2009
La Conservera is pleased to announce its third series of exhibitions by Valentin Carron, FOD, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, Eva Rothschild and Gert & Uwe Tobias
These five artists, for the most part sculptors, share a set of common concerns and interests and are all engaged in redefining, revising, appropriating or deconstructing concepts and forms grounded in the various movements associated with modernism, focusing their work on an exploration of new materials and conventional techniques.
Valentin Carron (Fully, Switzerland-1977)
Fibre fibre, austère austère.
Space 1
Valentin Carron works across sculpture, painting and installation. He reproduces real objects or elements with a symbolicly charged meaning from his own environment as well as from broader cultural contexts.
For his first exhibition in Spain, he is presenting in Space 1 a work called Fibre fibre, austère austère produced by La Conservera. The work comprises twelve elements, each a large wall-like object. These walls look like rough structures in grey plaster though they are actually made of fibre, referencing both painting ant nature. Each one of these works contains a different repeated geometrical element in the form of decorative openings or slots which are covered from behind by meshes of dark brown fibre. These are the kinds of walls of constructions that one can find in rural areas of south and central Europe and used as sheds for drying or storing grain.
Coinciding with this exhibition La Conservera has published the artist’s book “Learning from Martigny / Valentin Carron” in conjunction with JRP-Ringier.
FOD (Francisco Olivares Díaz. Puerto Lumbreras, Spain-1973)
Espacio disponible.
Courtyard
The importance of the architectural aesthetic in cities is an ongoing concern in FOD’s work. His apparently formal art contains a narrative component, underpinned by a desire to exercise the memory of the cities he inhabits. The artist has often posited a geometric scheme of reality, translating it to a painterly and sculptural language directly linked to constructivism, both formally as well as conceptually.
The Courtyard hosts a large sculpture produced by La Conservera made with material proper to construction. The work sets in place a dialogue with the very architecture of the art centre in order to create an Espacio disponible, an inhabitable and “Available Space” inside another.
La Conservera and Espacio AV have published a catalogue for this exhibition with essays by Christian Viveros Fauné and Javier Díaz Guardiola.
Manu Muniategiandikoetxea (Bergara, Spain-1966)
Night Flight
Space 3
The formalisation of space through constructive riffs and an exploration of their perceptive potential are still the core concern in a body of work that is recurrent in motifs, yet without exhausting itself in its own repertoire, thus consolidating a coherent continuum.
At Space 3 in La Conservera he has produced a sculpture of enormous proportions which, invades the whole space and projects reflections of itself onto the perimeter of the hall. Night Flight, as this exhibition is titled, consists of a large-scale enlargement of a sculpture by Alexander Rodchenko and the formation of a decorative pattern with the remains of the material used to construct it. This is not a Rodchenkian form, in terms of a derived style, but a free recreation of the Russian artist starting from direct appropriation.
La Conservera has published a catalogue for this exhibition with essays by Miguel Ángel Hernández-Navarro and Peio Aguirre.
Eva Rothschild (Dublin, Ireland-1971)
Space 4
Eva Rothschild’s sculptures derive from the abstraction of different visual codes and imagery. She explores the highly wrought relationship between objective form and new-age spiritualism. Rothschild approaches art as tantamount to a numinous belief system, where functionless objects become receptacles for immaterial sentiment, both inciting and emitting their own metaphysical auras.
For the first time in Spain, various bodies of work belonging to private European collections can be seen in Space 4 at La Conservera. At the centre of the hall are various pieces showcasing the different materials and features of the artist’s work, as well as a new sculpture produced expressly for La Conservera. At the back of the hall is a series of sculptures on metallic plinths, arranged in the form of people in conversation. The upper level houses the large sculpture called Supernature.
La Conservera has published a catalogue for the exhibition with an essay by Amanda Cuesta.
Gert & Uwe Tobias
Space 2
The Romanian twin brothers Gert & Uwe Tobias, who work in Germany, create large scale woodcuts and sculptural construction, as well as typewriter drawings, watercolours, ceramic sculptures and wood constructions. They usually combine these various techniques and media in installations full of lush, vivid colour and strong graphic compositions. Gert & Uwe Tobias are influenced by modern movements like cubism, expressionism, Dadaism and constructivism, mythology, fairytales, Hungarian-Romanian folk art and legends from their native Transylvania, bringing old stories and iconographies into the field of the present. Bringing a contemporary awareness to the classic woodcuts that flourished in the times of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and which made a comeback at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to expressionism, their works make reference not only to skulls and monsters, but also to modern graphic design and advertising, ancient ceramic forms, camp Hollywood horror films, and abstract imagery. The artists’ multi-media installations explore the way in which legends are formed and how objects stimulate cultural memory.
For their first solo show in Spain, they are presenting nineteen woodcuts in the two rooms in Space 2. The first will host, for the very first time, the latest series of posters made expressly for their solo exhibitions in galleries and art centres. In this installation, and quoting from Olivier Zybok’s essay in the exhibition catalogue: “In their exhibitions the brothers take the variety of forms and genres to a third dimension by means of murals and structural additions, so that each respective presentation can be remembered as an extension of its spectrum in the middle of the installation. In these room-like installations, the geometric regularities of specific architectural elements are underscored in the layout of the works and in the colour composition of the hall”. In this exhibition the woodcuts are presented with friezes around the frames, extending down to the ground. This form of presentation gives each work a sculptural effect, in turn influencing the perception of the specific symmetric elements of the hall. The poster for La Conservera is exhibited at the centre of the space on a steel structure. A series of new woodcuts is presented in the second room in Space 2. All these works belong to private European collections.
La Conservera has published a catalogue for the exhibition with an essay by Oliver Zybok.
Gert & Uwe Tobias (Kronstadt, Brasov, Rumania, 1973) live and work in Cologne. They have had solo shows at Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; The Breeder, Athens: Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf; Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, 2009. Team Gallery, New York; Kunstmuseum, Bonn, 2008. MOMA, New York; Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen; Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin; Kunstverein Heilbronn, Heilbronn, 2007. Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2006. The Breeder, Athens; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, 2005.
Their work has also been seen at State of Mind, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin;Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, 2009.
Wunderkammer, MOMA, New York; 50 Lunas de Saturno, T2–Triennale d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 2008. Made in Germany. Kestnergesellschaft, Sprengel Museum and Kunstverein Hannover, 2007.
La Conservera
Contemporary Art Center
Avenida de Lorquí, s/n.
30562, Ceutí (Murcia).
Tel.: (+34) 868923132
Download the full press release: www.laconservera.org/press/NP_LaConservera_Ciclo3_en.pdf
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