Carlos Irijalba
dal 19/5/2011 al 15/7/2011
Segnalato da
19/5/2011
Carlos Irijalba
Galerie Sherin Najjar, Berlin
The Road Not Taken. His series of works Twilight (2009) and Unwilling Spectator (2011) are leading into an entirely new area of contemporary photography and video art. At first, confronted by a concrete location, the viewer attempts to read Irijalba's work as a documentary. However, the element of construction involved leads us to question its authenticity.
Galerie Sherin Najjar is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Germany of the work of young spanish artist Carlos Irijalba (*1979, Pamplona).
Irijalbas complex outdoor productions and interventions in public space are both fascinating and provocative. His series of works Twilight (2009) and Unwilling Spectator (2011) are leading into an entirely new area of contemporary photography and video art. At first, confronted by a concrete location, the viewer attempts to read Irijalba’s work as a documentary. However, the element of construction involved leads us to question its authenticity.
In Twilight Irijalba challenges our understanding of the reality, and of the spectacle. Writing in his literary work The Society of Spectacle, the philosopher Guy Dubord sees the reinterpretation of reality through interventions in the public sphere as a method of calling the real world into question via a surrogate. Real experienced life is increasingly being replaced by its representation, which in turn exercises an entirely real effect on our life. In Twilight, the artist uses light to arouse attention. This series consists of the displacing of a floodlighting tower for a football pitch, a space that is hyperdefined by and for spectacle. In order to take the attention away from the original place and transfer this tower to one of Europe’s last forests, Irati, in the north of Navarre, Irijalba questions the importance of light in the western culture for the creation of reality.
The ideas of distortion of an everyday environment and the relativ experience of place is part of his latest series Unwilling Spectator. Visiting one of Chinas busiest crossroads, the Laiguangying junction of the 5th circular motorway in Beijing, he researched the artificiality of the surroundings and its architecture. Planting a small bonsai forest in the centre of the circular highway, the effect was to disrupt the established order of the location and to challenge the logic of speed and time, which is the foundation of our technologically driven society.
Carlos Irijalba exhibits in a number of galleries, museums and art fairs throughout the world. He is the winner of noumerous prizes and stipends and was awarded a scholarship from the renowned ISCP in New York City in 2009. In the same year, he completed an artist’s residency in Beijing. In 2004, he received the First Award for Young Artists and was awarded a Photography Scholarship from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Irijlaba gratuated in 1998 from the Pamplona School of Art and studied also at the University of Basque Country, where he obtained his Fine Arts degree. He also studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin under the tuition of artist and professor Lothar Baumgarten.
Image: Twilight 10, 2009. C-Print on Aluminium 170 x 155 cm Ed. of 5
Opening reception: Friday May 20, 7-9 pm
Galerie Sherin Najjar
Am Park 4, 10785 Berlin
Opening hours: Wed-Sat 1-6 pm