18/10/2006
Eugenio Ampudia
Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz
only a voracious idea
Eugenio Ampudia ... only a voracious idea brings together the fundamental works of a series begun more than a decade ago, developed and extended with a number of other works shown here for the first time, the main theme of which is an analysis of art as a vehicle for conveying ideas, and the artist as go-between. Consequently, the exhibition deals with placing these works and the "operator of ideas" within art institutions and the market.
Ampudia supports the idea that artists are people who have something to say (be these ideas or feelings, etc.) to those who use parameters of parallel or similar thoughts, the same thoughts as the ones they themselves have developed throughout history, in other words, those who speak for Valid interlocutors. He also maintains that art, such as we know it today, is an invention based on a system that has not been around for more than 200 years and that may well find itself in the process of being changed and broken up into a different system, with radically different devices and objectives to those in place today.
The oeuvre of Eugenio Ampudia re-inscribes names, pieces, institutions and other components of the art system in a broader and more extensive referential universe linked to the concept of culture or conscious. This is understood as a contemporary habitat, in which tradition and innovation coexist, which has set up (with an almost self-destructive capacity during the modern era) its own medium and condition, making itself (relatively) independent and generating its own cultural conventions and levels of distinction.
He observes and notices its forms of endogamic reproduction and considers the commercial, productive, patrimonial and investment aspects linked to culture in terms of merchandise, without forgetting the strategies that have led to its social prestige and to the elevation of its protagonists.
He does not tackle the art world or the art system as a mere exercise of intellectual recognition, but insists (rather than warn us, he intimates) on the prejudices and sentimental dispositions that underlie and coexist in our aesthetic judgements and preferential criteria.
The exhibition proposes an examination of the protagonists and components of the world of art, which requires and invites the intervention of the visitor. In this way, the active spectator moves among artists, examines all their techniques, interprets their works, explores public and commercial exhibition spaces, connects knowledge with the instruments of critics and the history of art and witnesses the efforts of collectors, all of them captives... only of a voracious idea.
Image: Fuego frio II, 2003 Video instalacio'n. Loop Edicio'n de 7
ARTIUM de A'lava
Calle Francia 24, 01002 Vitoria-Gasteiz
Opening hours:
11.00 to 20.00
Fridays and Saturdays, 11.00 to 20.30
Mondays, closed
Ticket office will close half an hour before closing time
Admission:
General 4,50 €
Concession 2,20 €