MUSAC inaugurates five new exhibitions by Pipilotti Rist, Enrique Marty, Wilfredo Prieto, the collective FUSION, and an intervention by VASAVA
from December 17, 2005
MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León)
On occasion of the opening of these exhibitions, MUSAC will be the first museum institution in Europe to show Drawing Restraint 9, the latest film of Matthew Barney with a soundtrack composed by Björk
Pipilotti Rist, ‘Homo Sapiens Sapiens’, 2005, video instalation.
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (based in León, Spain) inaugurates on December 17 five new exhibitions: two site-specific projects for MUSAC by Pipilotti Rist and Enrique Marty; the collective show FUSION, with works from the Collection of this Museum that dialogue with the different aspects of Asian culture; Wilfredo Prieto in Laboratorio 987 and Vasavas intervention in the showcases of the lobby. The MUSAC is an initiative of the Junta de Castilla y León through the Fundación Siglo.
Title: Pröblemäs büenös. 4 obras de Pipilotti Rist y amigäs
Artist: Pipilotti Rist
Venue: Exhibition Halls 4, 5 and 6, MUSAC
Date: December 15, 2005 – April 16, 2006
Curator: MUSAC
Coordinator: Marta Gerveno
Pipilotti Rist, one of the artists who have marked artistic practice in the 90s with greater force, presents a selection of her latest productions, as well as a disc that gathers the best of her music, ever present in her pieces. Four video installations in exclusive versions for MUSAC as well as a video that will be shown in a bar in the center of León, will complete the show. The work of Pipilotti Rist is inscribed within a narrative art, whose topic is the memory of the lived experience that is not past but that makes itself present. In a certain autobiographical form, but situated further than a mere personal anecdote, the video installations of Rist make of the body, of desire, of the sexual, of the fluid, of movement and of music, her leitmotiv.
On occasion of this show, a CD produced by MUSAC and edited by SUBTERFUGE RECORDS will be launched, entitled Soundtracks de las videoinstalaciones de Pipilotti Rist, with a total of 20 tracks. For the first time, a compilation of the music of Rist that are part of her video installations will be edited, of equal importance for the artist as her images.
Title: FUSION. Aspects of Asian Culture in the MUSAC Collection
Artists: bCandice Breitz, Alicia Framis, Yang Fudong, Zhang Huan, Pierre Huyghe, Kaoru Katayama, Kimsooja, Yasumasa Morimura, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Motohiko Odani, Hiraki Sawa, Do-Ho Suh, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Tabaimo
Venue: Exhibition Halls 1 and 3, MUSAC
Dates: December 17, 2005 April 16, 2006
Curators: Agustín Pérez Rubio and Kristine Guzmán
Coordinator: Blanca de la Torre
Among the five exhibitions that close the 2005 program of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León is the collective show, FUSION. Aspects of Asian Culture in the MUSAC Collection. This exhibition aims to establish a dialogue between two worldsthe East and the Westthat since the onset of civilization have been visibly separated at the same time that they have maintained a continuous symbiotic relationship of influences, especially in the artistic field. Fourteen artists, six Japanese, two Chinese, two Koreans, two Europeans, one South African and one South American will speak to us of encounters and disencounters, appropriations and influences of these two civilizations in the era of globalization.
Title: Flaschengeist, The Germans Cottage
Artist: Enrique Marty
Venue: Exhibition Hall 2, MUSAC
Dates: December 17, 2005 April 16, 2006
Curator: Estrella de Diego
Coordinators: Tania Pardo and María Soria
Enrique Marty (Salamanca, Spain, 1969) will build a huge scenography of olden carnival settings in MUSAC for this specific project. Different stands will house the characters of this particular Monster Parade: the girl who levitates, the seven-headed man, the snake-woman, the macro-encephalic, the dog-man, etc. Characters of this Carnival will introduce us into this world that combines surprise and magic with reality and tricks.
Title: ZOOVILIZATION
Artist: Vasava
Dates: December 17, 2005 April 16, 2006
Venue: Showcases of the MUSAC Lobby
Curator: Agustín Pérez Rubio
Coordinator: Carlos Ordás
ZOOVILIZATION is the exhibition project developed by Vasava for the Showcase Project of MUSAC. It deals with a work that recuperates the aesthetic and conceptual spirit of the Baroque Period in a formal, complex web (a horror vacui taken from the work of El Bosco, and in particular, El jardín de las delicias with a schematic composition related directly to it) that allows different levels of reading, supported by an elaborate structure of symbolic content. These symbols make reference to different aspects of contemporary society and culture (war conflicts, emigrations, technological advances), all of them imbued in a naïf and fun aesthetic, with comic and advertising influences, but that allow a glimpse into a more transcendental content.
Title: Mucho ruido y pocas nueces II (Much ado about nothing II)
Artist: Wilfredo Prieto
Venue: Laboratorio 987 (MUSAC)
Dates: December 17, 2005 February 19, 2006
Curator: Tania Pardo
Wilfredo Prieto (Sancti-Spiritus, Cuba, 1978) will develop a site-specific project for the Laboratorio 987 of MUSAC, continuing the development of his work principally based on installation. In this show, Mucho ruido y pocas nueces II (Much ado about nothing), he takes on the title of a project that was started in 2003 in Cuba, wherein he intended the spectator to reflect on the expected and, in this case, the unexpected within the exhibition space related to the world of contemporary art and current artistic gear.
Title: Drawing Restraint 9
Director: Matthew Barney
Format: 35 mm
Date: December 17, 2005
Place: Teatro Emperador (Avda Independencia 14, León, Spain; Tel: 34 987 25 09 20)
Time: 12:00 pm
MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León is pleased to present this magnificent work after its participation in the Venice Film Festival in 2005, in relation to the exhibition FUSION. Aspects of Asian Culture in the MUSAC Collection as the one parallel activity to this exhibition, but that contextualizes to perfection the pretensions of the said show. In this way, MUSAC has the honor of being the first museum institution in Europe to show this interesting work of the American artist that re-visits Nippon traditions.
About the film
Drawing Restraint 9, a film by Matthew Barney with a soundtrack composed by Björk, represents the first creative collaboration of two of the most protean, dynamic forces in music and fine art. It is an apt pairing. Refusing to choose between pop pleasure and restless experimentation, Björk’s musical vision weds technology and emotion, countering gut-level expression with an insistence upon formal modernity and innovation.
Similarly poised, and celebrated, within the world of contemporary art as Björk is within her own field, Matthew Barney is a visual artist whose ambitious, rigorous multimedia work encodes esoteric meanings while providing lushly immediate aesthetic rewards. Best known for The Cremaster Cycle, the sprawling sequence of five films made over ten years which was the subject of a recent Guggenheim retrospective, Matthew Barney’s work is multimedia in execution but singularly focused in conception: tightly unified fusions of sculpture, performance, architecture, set design, music, computer generated effects and prosthetics, Barney’s films deploy the full range of cinematic resources in the service of a hermetic vision rich with densely layered networks of meaning drawn from mythology, history, sports, music, and biology.
The basis of Barney’s approach is an operative tension between sculpture and film: the lingering attention to sensuous detail and richly organized aesthetics lends each character, costume, artifact, set, and architectural location within his work the frozen timelessness of sculpture– yet these components are subjected to vigorous processes of radical rupture and change as the films unfold.
His latest work, the two hour and fifteen minute magnum opus Drawing Restraint 9, was shot in Nagasaki Bay on board the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru.
Press Release written by Drew Daniel
High definition images at: prensa.musac.org.es
More information: www.musac.org.es/press room
MUSAC. MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE CASTILLA Y LEON
Clara Merín
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