Dolores Zinny Juan Maidagan
The coast, the attack, the same
8 February to 8 April 2007
sala rekalde
Alameda Recalde, 30
Bilbao 48009 (Spain)
www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net
The coast, the attack, the same is a new installation by Argentine artists Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan made specifically for sala rekalde that establishes an interplay between design, painting, sculpture and architecture. The exhibitions point of departure is a middle-sized architectural construction entitled Alarga la lengua (Stretch your tongue out), which unfurls within the exhibition space to reveal two series of basic materials (wood and polyester) that are interwoven. Accompanying it is a set of complementary works, including some drawings inspired by the same piece and a series of collages among others.
The work of Zinny Maidagan is remarkable for the architectural interventions it involves. Some of these develop along lines of a post-minimalist formalism (in that they are established as discrete architectural alterations that announce a new experience that is finally frustrated), whilst others reproduce prototypes, previously designed in small model format, on an architectural scale, recreating subjective scenarios from which a place for fiction becomes active within the exhibition space.
The titles of Zinny Maidagans works have a special function. Indeed they announce the performative capacity of their interventions. This occurred in pieces like Semantic Gap (2004), an installation, made specifically for the Lund Konsthall, that was inspired by their research into the history of the building and its architect Klas Anshelm, which championed a space empty of significance in relation to the work of art; and in A Façade that Considers no Interior Contains an Illusory Garden (2002), an engraved piece within the architectural environment of the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels, which provoked a suspension of time through a delay in the actual expectations aroused by the work and the separation of its institutional or urban setting; and 27 de Marzo (March 27th, 1993), a public installation made for the inauguration of the Bernardino Rivadavia Cultural Centre in Rosario, Argentina which consisted of a set of empty art containers placed opposite the building that, rather than celebrating its opening, deliberately stirred up confusion by hinting at its imminent demolition.
The installation in sala rekalde likewise plays on the multiplicity of readings available. One title, for instance, directly suggests that you stick out your tongue, urging you to stretch it to its full length, as the doctor might suggest when you go for an examination. The singularity of the installation lies in the dialectical movement of the two sequences of materials, whose impulsive form is proposed as a metaphor for the movement of language a language that, swept by the force of History, stretches out towards another and ends up in deadlock with it. From this picture of discontentment the artists challenge the spectator, once more taking up the idea of the final untranslatability of text or of a work of art, just as, in order to liberate its interpretation, Walter Benjamin chose to formulate it in The task of the translator (in Illuminations). And it is precisely in the idea of loss of origin which Benjamin communicates to us in his essay that we rediscover another constant in the artistic practice of Dolores Zinny Juan Maidagan: the manifestation of permanent phenomenological fracture that takes place vis-à-vis the work of art, or the unfulfilled promise of an absolute experience.
To accompany the exhibition, sala rekalde will publish a book, designed by the artists, with essays by Mónica Amor, Hyjunjin Kim and Leire Vergara.
During the same dates, the Abstract Cabinet of sala rekalde will be showing a solo project by Basque artist Iñaki Imaz. Lo Mío is a new collection of works that set up a mental relationship between the exhibition and the educational space of the Arts School of the Basque Country. The work of Iñaki Imaz constitutes a clear example of how contemporary painting like photography, video or other media establishes strong links with the context from which the work is produced. However, the way his painting sets you thinking goes further than an automatic response to a set of physical conditions that must supposedly be adapted to.
For further information please contact:
Constanza Erkoreka, Press Officer
Tel:( 34) 94 406 87 07
Fax: ( 34) 94 406 87 54
salarekalde@bizkaia.net
