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29/1/2010

Four Exhibitions

MUSAC Contemporary Art Museum, Leon

Yorgos Sapountzis presents at Laboratorio 987 a site-specific project based on the redefinition of public space.
Curated by Tania Pardo

The Greek artist Yorgos Sapountzis (Athens, 1976) will hold his first solo show in Spain at Laboratorio 987. The show consists of a site-specific project created for the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León and fundamentally based on the concept and limitations of public space, its conventions and its annihilation through the appropriation and construction of a personal heterotopia, in allusion to the Foucaultian term, which makes reference to the heterogeneous space that the contemporary city actually is.

Sapountzis’ works characteristically take the shape of performances and installations with which he creates a unique heterogeneous space, reflecting on the symbolism of urban public sculpture and its relation to the city and its inhabitants. In this way, he alters the perception of our environment to determine a new reading of public action.

His work reinterprets mystified urban objects, touching on the idea of appropriation and the definition of the limits of public space. His installations are the result of a profound reflection on the historical and temporal aspects of the city, conceived as a relational space. Therefore, Sapountzis creates what he himself defines as “parasitic sculptures”, objects that feed on everything around them, which construct other realities through their presence. The work thus achieves a restructuring of space, which comes to the fore, overshadowing time, as social criticism, redefining and creating new frontiers not only regarding the concept of “public space” but also the preconceived parameters of public behaviour.

Sapountzis’ work reflects on the idea of the myths and formal language of Modern Art in the public space. To develop his actions, the artist uses ordinary materials—cloth, newspaper, wood, etc.—achieving installation that he accompanies with video creations and electronic music, giving rise to disturbingly beautiful pieces, which refer to a certain existential solemnity through the object and sound.

The show Pre-Bellevue, specifically conceived for the Laboratorio 987 space, will comprise a complex installation in the hall and a performance, with which the Greek artist approaches an exploration of the memory of the everyday objects from our surrounding environment that are undergoing constant redefinition, creating new frontiers for reflecting on our notion of what public space and behaviour constitute and symbolise.

Yorgos Sapountzis (Athens, 1976) lives and works in Berlin, the city in which he completed his artistic training. His most noteworthy one-person exhibitions include Menschen Tiere Sensationen, in Kunstverein Arnsberg (Arnsberg, Germany, 2009); Horizon Drop, Hermes und der Pfau, (Stuttgart, Germany, 2009), Forgotten Tactics, Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery (Berlin, Germany, 2006) and Nightly, at the Loraini Alimantiri/Gazonrouge gallery (Athens, Greece, 2005). He participated in Art Basel 2008 with the project After Electricity, the Remains of a Start presented by the gallery Loraini Alimantiri Gazonrouge in the section of the fair called Art Statement. His most recent group projects include Flüchtige Zeiten en Westfaelischer Kunstverein (Munster, Germany) curated by Katja Schroeder; Hidden in Remembrance is the Silent Memory of Our Future, The 4th Biennial of Moving Image, (Mechelen, Belgium), curated by Katerina Gregos; both in 2009. During 2008 he participated in the shows Social Diagrams. Planning reconsidered, Kuenstlerhaus Stuttgart, (Stuttgart, Germany), curated by Jesko Fezer and Axel John Wieder; Athensville, Art Athina, (Athens, Greece), under the curatorship of Marina Fokidis; and Common View, curated by Eleni Koukou and Ghislaine Dantan, held at The National Theatre (Athens, Greece). Also of note is his participation in Breakthrough! GREECE 2004: Contemporary Perspectives in the Visual Arts, Alcala 31, on the occasion of the participation of Greece as special guest country during ARCO Madrid 2004; project curated by Katerina Gregos, Denys Zacharopoulos and Sania Papa.

His most notable actions/performances include those held at Temporäre Kunsthalle, (Berlin, Germany, 2009), by the title of Schalen der Zeit / Shells of time: part -1 die bewegt sich nicht bewegen / the moved do not move, Marbach; part-2 ist das Jetzt Zeit? / is the now time? ; Out Window and About, Kuenstlerhaus (Stuttgart, Germany, 2008); After Electricity-Forth (2008) Artbasel Statement and After Electricity - from the life of the people (2008), curated by Luca Cerizza and Jennifer Chert, Micamoca, Berlin. At the Sculpture Garden of Basel (2007) he produced an action called The Tree Bring Forth Sweet Ecstasy 1, curated by Caroline Eggel and Christiane Rekade.

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MUSAC’s Showcases to Display
Loud Flash. British Punk on Paper
Curated by Susanna Greeves, Carlos Ordás

From 30 January, 2010, MUSAC shall exhibit Loud Flash. British Punk on Paper, a survey of the aesthetics and politics of British punk and its legacy to modern culture and society. This exhibition examines the imprint punk has left on the visual language of the larger part of contemporary art and on the anti-elitist and DYI ethos of artists, bloggers and musicians. This threefold exhibition begins in the Showcase Project, where a selection of gig posters, zines, flyers and other objects held in artist and former punk figure Toby Mott’s extensive private collection will be shown. An edition of five plates will also be exhibited: reproductions of some of the posters on show, along with texts written by authorities on the subject. The project will culminate on 27 and 28 March in a punk aesthetics seminar in which several experts will analyse punk’s legacies and prevalence in various spheres and disciplines, from art to music and politics.

This exhibition is a compelling portrait of a particular moment in British popular culture, at the bitter end of the post-war period. It tells its story through a unique collection of several hundred posters, flyers and other ephemera assembled by artist and erstwhile punk, Toby Mott. With the passion of a true fan and an artist’s eye for an image, he has gathered the evidence of the short life and premature, messy end of British Punk. There are iconic images by artists such as Jamie Reid and Linder Sterling, as well as flyers, gig posters, and zines, crudely cut and pasted by anonymous hands. A fascinating collection of political material supplies further context of a nation of unrest, torn by extremism, recording attempts by political extremes of both left and right to co-opt the power of youth.

Ephemeral and throwaway as each of these objects were, collected together they tell, in uniquely immediate and visual terms, a part of the history of Britain, the history of ideas, and the history of art. Punk has always exerted a fascination, but perhaps never stronger than at this moment.

The legacy of punk has permeated modern culture and society, and its visual vocabulary infuses much contemporary art, while the punk spirit resonates in particular with the anti-elitist, DIY ethos of today’s young, blogging artists and musicians. This exhibition recalls the anarchic spirit of authenticity and amateurism, the volatile and ambiguous celebration of negativity, creativity, violence and protest that was Punk. Accompanying the exhibition, MUSAC will put out an edition of 5 plates designed by Scott King reproducing some of the posters exhibited in the showcase. Each will carry a text printed on the back by authors Simon Ford, Susanna Greeves, Caroline Greville-Morris, Toby Mott, Tom Vague and Matthew Worley. The edition will be packaged in a simulated 12” album cover.

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Txomin Badiola, Jon Mikel Euba and Sergio Prego
PRIMER PROFORMA 2010 - BADIOLA EUBA PREGO 30 exercises 40 days 8 hours a day, a new approach to creating artistic projects that reaches beyond conventional notions of exhibiting and/or pedagogy

MUSAC, Txomin Badiola (Bilbao, 1957), Jon Mikel Euba (Bilbao, 1967) and Sergio Prego (San Sebastian, 1969) present the project PRIMER PROFORMA 2010 2010 BADIOLA EUBA PREGO 30 exercises 40 days 8 hours a day as part of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León’s fifth anniversary exhibition schedule. Between January and June 2010, MUSAC’s more than 4,000 m2 of exhibition space will host a new approach to creating artistic projects that goes beyond conventional notions of exhibiting and pedagogy implemented to date by the Museum and the artists themselves. Badiola, Euba and Prego take on the challenge of a project that will ultimately achieve something more than the sum of their three individual contributions by actively sharing the creative process. The result of this challenge is PRIMER PROFORMA 2010 BADIOLA EUBA PREGO 30 exercises 40 days 8 hours a day.

http://www.musac.es/prensa/web14/p_eng0.html

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Augusto Alves da Silva
Iberia

From 30 January to 28 March 2010 and within the framework of its 5th anniversary events programme, the Castilla y León Museum of Contemporary Art (MUSAC) shall host Iberia by Augusto Alves da Silva, one of Portugal’s most highly acclaimed artists of the 1990s. In Iberia, viewers will be confronted with a random projection of more than 5000 images captured by the artist in the course of a journey by jeep across Spain. In his installation, Alves da Silva combines snapshots taken using a device mounted on the windscreen of his 4x4, which create the impression of riding in the vehicle, with live sounds from the Spanish radio stations he tuned into along the way.

This piece shall be shown at MUSAC thanks to a collaboration agreement signed in September 2009 between the Castilla y León Regional Government Culture and Tourism Council and the Serralves Foundation of Oporto. The piece pertains to Augusto Alves da Silva’s solo exhibition Sem saída/Ensaio sobre Optimismo, held at the Museu Serralves and curated by the museum’s director João Fernandes.

Excerpt from the Sem saída/Ensaio sobre Optimismo exhibition catalogue, written by curator João Fernandes: “... Iberia emanates from a journey across Spain’s back roads (and dirt roads) by jeep. The artist rigged up a device which secured the camera to the jeep, allowing the journey to be shot from the position of the windscreen, giving the viewer the sensation of riding inside the vehicle, with the images coming at him. After editing – a process of framing and cropping each snapshot – the resulting thousands of photos are randomly cinemascoped onto a giant screen. The projection is accompanied by a streamed transmission of sounds from various Spanish radio stations, similar to those the artist tuned into over the course of the journey. Reminiscent of a movie by Sergio Leone, who shot many of his films in Spain, the scale of the images is epic, and the marvellous dimension of the journey, quixotic.

...Most of these images are desertscapes. Almost all of them lack any human presence, transforming any imprint or vestige of that human presence into an event...This relationship between the event and the non-event is recognisable in other works by Augusto Alves da Silva, such as Estrada em Obra (Motorway under Construction), imbuing the work with a unique narrative. At variance with this work, in Iberia there is only one possible road to follow, there is no past and no going back. A village in the distance, a cyclist, a girl running, bales of hay, birds taking flight, fallen trees at the roadside, a strip-club called Sky, a bull or a goat crossing the roadway, are all examples of those mini-events that give a glimpse of a possible narrative to this no beginning – and no end – route. The images seem to remind us that there is no landscape devoid of perspective nor traces of human life. At the same time, the photographs are a consequence of a detour from the typical “trip” defined by contemporary society: conventional roads or motorways, only briefly appearing here, are symbolised by the edge of a traffic light or the trace of a motorway parallel to the path being followed.”

Venue: Auditorium vestibule, MUSAC
MUSAC OFF Project: A Collaborative project between MUSAC and the Serralves Foundation of Porto
* Iberia is one of the works in the exhibition Sem saída / Ensaio sobre Optimismo, curated by João Fernandes at the Museu Serralves (23 October, 2009 - 31 January, 2010)

MUSAC Press & Communications Dept.
T. +34 987 09 00 00
F. +34 987 09 11 11
prensa@musac.es

Augusto Alves da Silva, From the series Iberia, 2009
Audiovisual Installation, Produced by Fundación Serralves (Porto, Portugal)
Courtesy Museu Serralves (Porto, Portugal)
© the artist

Opening January 30th, 2010

MUSAC Contemporary Art Museum
Avda. de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 - Leon
Opening Hours: Tuesdays to Thursdays 11-20
Fridays 11-21, Saturdays & Sundays 10-21
Closed on Mondays
Free admission

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