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18/10/2012

Lothar Baumgarten

Fundacion Marcelino Botin, Santander

“Los Aristócratas de la Selva y la Reina de Castilla” is a work in progress of several different components, which interact in situ, within the existing architectural conditions of the Botin Foundation exhibition space in Santander.

The parcours of this presentation has its center in the nave containing the four ship models at a scale of 1:20 of one Coca, two caravels, the Pinta and the Niña, beside the vessel Santa María.

Those ship models signify through their straightforward magnificent manufacturing, the nautical technology and engineering at the time of the Discovery of the Américas. The Santa María, originally built from the wood of Cantabrian forests, emphasizes the great maritime culture of this rough coast. The boats rest on steel bases, materializing the ocean sea.

The nave’s baldachin is flanked by ten columns, which are stained with Onoto seeds (Bixa orellana L.) by hand. A plant source used for body paint by most South and Central American native peoples. A circumstance which, mistakenly led, early on, - to the name ’Red Skin’. This vibrant pigment and its aroma signify in this piece animism, the belief cosmos of Amerindian societies. Enclosed by chinchorros from the native Warao of the Delta Amacuro in Venezuela, the center is transformed into the inner sections of a ship itself. It also represents the central plaza of a native house: shapono, maloka, or churuata, as a protected world, mirroring the surrounding cosmos and its firmament. The chain of hammocks creates a barrier making the center inaccessible. It mutates it into a taboo zone and a space of reflection. Surrounded by a score of native river names which represent the rapidly vanishing tongue of the non-writing societies of the; Pemón (Arekuna, Taurepan, Kamarakoto, Ingariko), Yé kuana, Hoti, Panare, Piaroa, Warao, Arawak, Sanema, Yãnomãm?, Baré, Makú, Wapishana, Makushi, Wai Wai ... The type face stands out in four colours within the obscure infinity of the enclosing black-painted walls. The configuration of the river names follows partly a geographical order or linguistic parameters. They are phonetically composed and in their playful dance they map a typographical landscape of the Guayana shield in Venezuela, Brazil, British Guyana and Suriname. Their archaic melody of native place names and the remains of their many languages will only survive in our maps.

As the curator, Alicia Chillida, explains in the book accompanying the exhibition, “every new intervention by the artist, whether related to a place, an architectural context, to a publication, is the result of a profound reflexion which sends offshoots of meaning in multiple directions. When we look at his work we lose our own balance as observers”.

Lothar Baumgarten is a renowned artist whose work has been given solo exhibitions at famous international institutions such as S. R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museu Serralves, Oporto, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, MOCA, Los Angeles, IVAM, Valencia, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Whitney Museum, New York, MACBA, Barcelona, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Kunsthaus Bregenz. He was awarded the Golden Lion at the XLII Venice Biennale in 1984, and his work has been exhibited on four occasions at Documenta.

Baumgarten lived for 18 months among the Yãnomãm? in the Venezuelan Amazon from 1978 to 1980.

Lothar Baumgarten, "Crossing the Atlantic with the MS Boleslaw Chrobry, PLO", 1978.

PRESS OFFICE
Isabel Cubría: prensa@fundacionbotin.org

The inauguration is on Friday 19 October at 8:00 p.m.

Fundacion Marcelino Botin
calle Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola 3
Daily opened from 10:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Closed the 25 December and 1 January
24 and 31 December from 10:30 am to 14:00 pm.

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