Go between in between

Transcription

1 Go between in between Sculpture Show 18th to 22th January 2016 Stephan Foster Ares Marta Moreu Mónica Porta Sara Pons Arnal Marta Pruna Teresa Riba Jaime de Córdoba Maarten Renes

2 Presentación The visual reflection that has accompanied this conference in its many editions completes the gift of the word. In this case, it appears that the core of identity in crisis or in reconstruction has led our artists to the representation of man. From the great entry created by Stephen Foster s video installation to Ares s empty chair, we are invited to critically contemplate the path that humankind has taken in recent times. The young female figure in front of a wall by Teresa Riba beckons towards silence; Marta Moreu s inverted woman towards inner change; the praying woman by Pruna towards a meditating steady as well as forgotten beliefs. Like ripe fruit hanging, Pons Arnal exhibits a series of faces that appear to condense time. They are faces in thought and in old age, penetrable in their transparency yet locked like an archeology of the past. The concept of cultural exchange comes to fruition in the extraordinary caged birds made by Mónica Porta. She speaks to us through hidden videos of the enigmatic dialogue imposed by globalization. The unsteady passage of thought, study and nature are represented in the sculpture You will reach the light. Finally, the only abstract work of this exhibition, by Maarten Renes, acts as a distant lighthouse that sheds immaterial light on the processes of change experienced by all of us nowadays. Jaime de Córdoba Full profesor. Fine Arts University of Barcelona. UB 18th January 2016

3 Re-mediating Curtis: Remix Multichanel and multi-screen video. Variable dimensions. STEPHAN FOSTER Canada In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914, later titled In the Land of the War Canoes) is an early ethnographic film by Edward S. Curtis. The film was produced on Deer Island near Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. Using interactive installation techniques, this multi-channel and multi-screen video installation remixes the original film by Curtis with some of the more heavily influenced Hollywood films. A complex multi-channel soundscape interacts with the video footage in the installation creating a unique ambient sonic environment. The audience controls the sound and video elements through itown remix of the original Curtis film. This work is an attempt to deconstruct Curtis film and the imagined history it reports to represent as a pivot cultural expression at the foundation of modern popular culture and our socially constructed concept of indigeneity.

4 Refugee Chair 2015 Wrought iron. 97 x 45 x 40 cm. ARES Villar de Golfer, León, 1968 It is an everyday object that disintegrates, like an image of pain caused by the loss of experiences lived in a chair that dilute into oblivion while people run away from military conflicts in their countries, forced to move beyond their borders to territories in peace, towards an uncertain future.

5 Cap per avall 2015 Polyester resin. 150 x 50 x 50 cm. MARTA MOREU Barcelona, 1961 The inverted posture is to turn our world upside down. Gravity produces changes in our external appearance and in our spirit. Globalisation has turned our identity inside

6 Two birds 2016 Instalación site-specific. Variable dimensions. MONICA PORTA Barcelona, 1972 I have designed and made a site-specific installation with sculpture, audio and video in the entrance of the Paranimf Hall. It is based on two kinds of birds: the kookaburra, native to Australia, whose song resembles human laughter; and the bee-eater, native to Europe, which has a very characteristic call as well. On each side of the entrance door a small iron cage displays a bronze bird. Inside each cage a video is projected in a loop, showing the image and reproducing the song of each bird. From the outside one can see light and movement inside and both birds are heard singing at the same time, as if they were in dialogue or in debate. Sometimes they appear to listen to each other and other times to talk, which is what will happen as soon as the delegates walk through the Aula Magna doors and the congress begins.

7 AREWENUMBERS? 2014 Fiberglass and steel wires 65 cm. each piece. 120cm. Stack height. SARA PONS ARNAL Lleida, 1970 We lose our identity by being transformed into numbers, lengthening an endless list with limitless purposes that makes the world go round.

8 Orante Ulldecona Stone. 130 x 52 x 21 cm. MARTA PRUNA Barcelona, 1970 Time halting in front of us due to the illusions of the future, looking beyond. The sun is generous and praiseworthy: we know she is always there, even when she does not come out. We fail to understand the distance that separates her from us, as much as we ignore the distances amongst us. Human complexity outdoes that of nature s cycles of change.

9 SAIDIA. (suahili word for help) 2013 Polyester & fiber glass 135 x 43 x 40 cm. TERESA RIBA Igualada, 1961 Communication technology approximates (us) or distances (us) Globalisation unifies (us) or eliminates (our) identity Unity opens (our) frontiers or closes them (to us) Where is the unrepeatable individual? Where is the warmth of embrace?

10 The Uncanny Borders of Belonging,2014. Metal and fabric, height 200 cm. MAARTEN RENES Utrecht, 1961 if one considers the Unheimliche as a fork of which one branch points in the direction of an anxiety, one sees, at the extreme end of the uncanny, fiction pointing towards the unknown: what is newest in the new, through which it in part is linked with death (Hélène Cixous, Fiction and its Phantoms, 1976: 547).

11 Ganarás la luz, Stone. 148 x 90x 36 cm. JAIME DE CÓRDOBA Barcelona, 1961 Everything goes and everything stays but our fate is to pass to pass making a path as we go, ( ) I love the subtle worlds, weightless and gente ( ) Traveller, your footprints make the path, and nothing else. Traveller, there is no path. A path is made by walking. From Cantares/Songs. Antonio Machado

12 Galeria del Paranimf de la Universitat de Barcelona Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, Barcelona Spain