Diego Santome'
dal 19/6/2014 al 25/10/2014
Segnalato da
19/6/2014
Diego Santome'
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea CGAC, Santiago de Compostela
Corner piece and other conflicting spaces. The exhibition brings together a series of works that sum up the issues dealt with in his work over the last decade. They allow him to approach the transitory nature of structures and of society.
Curator Agar Ledo
The discursive strategies that provide the foundation for the work of Diego Santomé (Vigo, 1966) are directly linked to the concepts of utopia and failure, equilibrium and instability. In both the selection of the materials and the work process, Santomé bases his approach on subjects related to the circumstances of everyday life and their transformation, showing the possibility/impossibility of a new order leading to a balanced society.
The Project for the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) brings together a series of works—some already in existence, while others have been specifically created for this exhibition—that sum up the issues dealt with in his work over the last decade. Cinema, photography, installation art, sculpture, performance art and illustration are formats that allow him to approach—from a critical vantage point—the transitory nature of structures and of society. The simple shapes, linked to the minimalist aesthetic style that has marked his production from the very beginning and the ephemeral character of the materials and objects he uses, are fundamental to the construction of new meanings. What is simple and inconsequential and anything of a tentative nature have the possibility of undergoing major changes.
In 2009, Diego Santomé curated an exhibit entitled La importancia del pez cebra [The Importance of the Zebra Fish] (Galería Parra & Romero). He brought together several artists who executed their work from simple materials linked to the political and social context from which they came. The zebra fish, which, unassuming in appearance, however, of key importance in scientific discoveries in the field of genetics, functions as a metaphor for the underlying social implications of this simplicity.
These new narratives, associated with the ephemeral nature of objects, are present in works like Vidrieras (2011), fashioned out of pieces of glass found among the rubble from demolished buildings in different areas, or in the film Castillos de arena (2008), in which Santomé portrays the daily life of two Czech immigrants who make a living building a sandcastle on Praia América (Nigrán, Pontevedra), while they impassively witness its cyclic process of destruction. One of the new projects presented in this exhibit is a film, which like a reflection, draws a parallel between the danger of the extinction of the European pond turtle in the ecosystem of As Gándaras de Budiño (O Porriño, Pontevedra), and the ideals that support the construction of a fairer society. They are processes designed to unhide a reality that emerges as the failure of social utopias, whose footprints are recovered by Diego Santomé to ponder the possibility of reconstructing them.
PRESS & COMUNICATION DEPARTMENT
Agar Ledo Ph.: 981 546632 / Fax: 981 546625 cgac.prensa@xunta.es
Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC)
Ramón del Valle Inclán 2
15703 Santiago de Compostela
Opening times: 11 to 20 h
Closed on Monday
Free entry