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7/10/2009

Abigail Lazkoz

Sala Rekalde, Bilbao

Curator Leire Vergara

The Sala Rekalde presents Extraordinary Machines, a one-person show by the artist Abigail Lazkoz (Bilbao 1972), who lives and works in New York. This is an installation expressly realised for the main gallery consisting of a set of monumental drawings in black and white on free standing panels and on the walls, a series of three dimensional structures that unfold within the exhibition space creating different areas, and an animated video that refers to the origin of animated cinema to emphasise the expression of drawing through movement.

The exhibition

Extraordinary Machines is configured as a “landscape of battle” developed in different phases. All the elements articulate a possible narrative path dealing with war and destruction, not only as references recurrent in their literalness, but also as metaphors that make evident another type of quotidian conflict. Based on an apparently simple pictorial composition, the drawings are established as basic elements that mark the formal and conceptual rhythm of the show. They invite the spectator to submerge him/herself in the symbolic wealth of their details, in the pictorial structure of the line and the starkness of the pictorial gesture, with the aim of delving, from the particularity of the references employed, into universal questions like death and the devastation. In this respect, the artist’s endeavour to occupy the whole exhibition space setting out from the very materiality of drawing can be perceived. The exhibition thus functions as a kind of reordering of the basic elements that the artist has used, first in the drawings and then in the exhibition space.

In short, this is a constructive way of spreading her drawing throughout the whole of the exhibition area. The result is a reconciliation between figuration and abstraction, on whose basis the narrative structure of the drawings interweaves with the constructive forms of which they are composed. In this way, a series of almost totemic basic forms coexist with the wealth and idiosyncrasy of the narrative references of the drawn works.

The exhibition Extraordinary Machines is indebted to a previous series titled War Stories I Have Heard (2004). The series, made up of six drawings on paper, some executed subsequently on the wall and with much greater dimensions, dealt with the construction of collective memory through lived experiences. Each drawing developed a specific idea in relation to oral transmission, the construction of memory and how individual identity is built on the stories one receives. This series also used war as a narrative background and reflected on the historical conditioning factors that end up giving a concrete character to each generation.

The title of the exhibition is the refrain of a song by the American composer Fiona Apple that runs as follows: Be kind to me, or treat me mean, I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine…With this phrase, the artist Abigail Lazkoz wishes to emphasise a certain irreducible strength and the possibility of growth on the basis of both the good and the bad. It is a phrase that offers hope in face of the reality of permanent conflict that characterises our contemporary society.

Abigail Lazkoz: her work

For Abigail Lazkoz the aesthetic and conceptual strength of drawing and painting resides in conceiving both languages as laboratories of the imagination. That is, she takes a position facing pictorial language that claims a certain demiurgic capacity when producing possible new forms of understanding the world that go beyond its faithful representation. This becomes evident in her drawing in the stark gesture of the black line on a white background. This simple gesture, stripped of all ornament, gives the artist absolute freedom when it comes to proposing new possibilities of expression in the face of reality.

At the same time this is a process of apprenticeship that sets out from the formal possibilities of the recourse of the black mark on white. A reference that relates drawing to the origins of writing.

Lazkoz generally defines her pictorial language as being stripped of all gestural expression; her option is based on the tense line and zero gesture, which in the final term problematises painting through the reduced economy of the media employed. This reduction of the resources needed in producing the work provides it with a self-sufficiency and mobility that, in short, free her artistic practice.

Abigail Lazkoz’s drawing goes beyond the construction of possible scenarios; her most recent works show a painstaking interest in the construction of a specific vocabulary based on the sobriety of the drawing materials. A way of emphasising pictorial language and of creating references and elements that interrelate to construct a complex syntax.

Abigail Lazkoz was awarded the Gure Artea prize in 2006, First prize of ERTIBIL 2005 and granted by the Regional Government of Biscay.
Abigail Lazkoz was born in Bilbao in 1972. She lives and works in New York. She has held numerous one-person shows, of which the following are notable: Shuffle (2009) in Espai 13, Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona, Desastres naturales (2007) in the Centre d’Art La Panera, Lleida, Esconde la Mano (2005) in Laboratorio 987, MUSAC, León, War Stories I Have Heard (2004) in Momenta Art Brooklyn, Nueva York, Abi Lazkoz Zeichnungen (2003) in Werkraum Modula Buchholz Denklingen, Munich, Humus (2003) in la Casa Encendida, Madrid, Welcome Drawings (2002) in Galería Abel: Raum für Neue Kunst, Berlin and Dibujos de bienvenida (2001) in Fundación BilbaoArte, Bilbao.
Her most recent involvement in group exhibitions includes 25 obras, 17 artistas, 4 relatos in the Centre d’Art La Panera (2009); Biennale Internacional d’art Contemporain d’Argel, Algiers (2009). From Brooklyn with Love in Parker’s Box, Brooklyn, Nueva York (2008); Bilder in Folge in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2008); Chacun a son goute in Guggenheim Bilbao (2007); Streetmodernism in the Mama Showroom, Rótterdam (2007); Deus ex machina in the Market Gallery, Glasgow (2006); A Picturesque View in the Monya Rowe Gallery, New York (2006); Greater New York in the PS1-MOMA Nueva York (2005); The Gift in the Queens Museum of Art, Nueva York (2005); Mientras tanto en otro lugar… in Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2004); Internal Excess, Selections Fall 2003, in The Drawing Art Centre, Nueva York (2003).

Publication
On the occasion of the exhibition, sala rekalde is publishing a catalogue that reproduces this new production by Abigail Lazkoz. The volume will document the creative development of this new installation and will include texts by the historian Iria Candela and a conversation with the show’s curator Leire Vergara. The book is designed by the Catalan designers Albert Folch Studio and includes photographs of the work taken by Begoña Zubero.

Sala Rekalde
Alameda Recalde 30 - 48009 Bilbao
Opening hours
Tuesday to Saturday: 11:00-14:00 y 17:00-20:30 h
Sundays and festives: 11:00-14:00 h
Monday closed

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