17/3/2009
Antony Gormley
Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz
Between You and Me
An international coproduction that features the essential works of one of the great innovators of European
sculpture.
ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibition Between You And Me, by Antony
Gormley (North Gallery, until August 30), a selection of works by this English artist who is considered to be one of
the great renovators of European sculpture.
Over the last 25 years, Gormley has revitalised the human figure in
sculpture based on his perception of the human body as a place of memory and transformation. The central theme
of his work is the individual and his position in the universe and Gormley’s creations are full of great symbolic
intention, from the forcefulness of the figures in iron and lead to the lightness and fragility of those made with rods or
clay. Between You And Me, the first travelling exhibition of Gormley's work in Europe, is a coproduction of ARTIUM
(Vitoria-Gasteiz), Kunsthal (Rotterdam) and Musée d’Art Moderne (St. Etienne), with the collaboration of Galerie
Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris, Salzburg) and the sponsorship of the Provincial Council of Alava, Ministry of Culture,
Mondragon, Naturgas and EITB.
Antony Gormley (London 1950) graduated in Archaeology, Anthropology and History from Trinity College, Cambridge and after
a period in India, where he studied meditation, he studied art at the Central School of Art, Goldsmith College and at the Slade
School of Fine Art. Among other awards, he won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1994. Gormley regularly uses his own body as
a model, tool and material, and since the Nineties, his commitment to the human condition has led him to produce large-scale
installations that reflect the nature of the collective body and one's relationship with others. His latest works relate more to
energy systems, fields and vectors than to his former preference for mass and defined volume.
The exhibition Antony Gormley offers at ARTIUM features two large installations, possibly two of the most significant works of
his career: Critical Mass II (1995) and European Field (1993). In addition, there are earlier works ranging from Bread Line
(1979) to Seeds III (1989) and other recent works such as Quantum Void II (2008). The exhibition features the piece Reflection
II (2008), which is on show between the exterior of the Centre-Museum and the interior of the Cube-ARTIUM cafeteria, and
Touch III (2008), on show in the hallway of the headquarters of EITB (Basque radio and television company) in Bilbao.
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Until May 3 2009
Pepo Salazar
Walk Among Us (Attack, Sustain, Release, Decay) is the title of the project presented by Pepo Salazar at ARTIUM, and is the result of work and research carried out by the artist over the last two years between New York and Valencia. The exhibition is made up of a large collection of photographs, installations, videos and objects, thus making it extremely difficult to categorise. In them, one can see the synthesis of a number of conceptual and aesthetic proposals that the artist has developed throughout his career.
With its clearly defined identity, this exhibition sets out Pepo Salazar’s vision of the current socio-cultural movement and the relationship (often perverse) that is established between the market and culture.
An initial examination of the work presented at ARTIUM provides us with a number of insights into the meaning of his proposal. The iconoclastic aesthetics of movements such as punk, rebellious attitudes or teenage vandalism, merge into constant allusions to the history of art, to utopian avant-garde movements, such as Dada, Situationist proposals or contemporary philosophy. All of them are vital options of commitment and of the struggle to transform society, a struggle that is largely dead and buried today, gruesomely swallowed up and placed at the service of the very same system that it denounces.
The work of Pepo Salazar lies between the anguish of this loss and the need to do (art), in order to–in his own words–, create the chance to generate attitudes and new expressions, capable, at the same time, of producing critical matter.
It might be said that this is an exhibition of both physical and mental spaces, at a moment of interruption, an instant charged with the presence of what has occurred and what is still to happen. Many of these works convey the idea that something has just happened or is about to happen. This highlights one of the main features of Salazar’s work: the process.
The installations shown in this exhibition function like artefacts, thinking machines about our culture, in which the artist has managed to maintain a visual tension, sustained between degradation and beauty.
Image: Antony Gormley, Quantum Void II, 2008 (See work), 3mm square section stainless steel bar, 322 x 210 x 90 cm
Departamento de Comunicación
Anton Bilbao Tel: 945-209023 abilbao@artium.org - bgodino@artium.org
Opening Wednesday March 18, 8 PM
ARTIUM Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art
C/ Francia, 24 - 01002 Vitoria-Gasteiz