calendario eventi  :: 

X

5/7/2007

Two exhibitions

Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea CGAC, Santiago de Compostela

July 6 - September 2
CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE IN GALICIA

Curator: David Chao, Verónica Santos and Rafael Lens

At a present time in which terms such as redistribution, culturalisation or globalisation areimperative in the language of art and architecture criticism, Galiciahas revealed itself as being one of the most outstanding regionsinsofar as the development of new architectural proposals and languagesis concerned. Its peripheral geographical, i.e., not central, situationdoes not seem to have been an obstacle for shaping this phenomenon,linked as much to continuous interaction and flux as it is to theimpression of the medium. Since the 1980s and even earlier several werethe architectures which gave away the concerns and efforts of certain architects,institutions and developers to modernise when proposing constructionalsolutions as progressive as they were original. In this process, thecontributions of nationally and internationally-renowned figures havebeen determining factors when proposing conceptual and formaldivergencies, thus complementing the worrying autochthonous panoramawhich was being born of a creative heterogeneous exceptionality. Behindthe suggestive and at the same time clarifying title Avance de una contingencia(Preview of an eventuality), the exhibition which is held on the groundfloor of the CGAC, the Bonaval Zona C room and the COAG exhibitionrooms, is the consequence of a parallel process of searching, reviewand analysis of the main architectural trends established in Galiciasince the 1980s until the present day, as conscious works whichgenerate the context of Galician contemporary architecture.

Theselection presented is intended to offer an intensive view of aphenomenon which is exceptional in our creative panorama. The functional and aesthetic criteria when assessing and presenting eacharchitectural work have only served to increase the number of variablesinvolved insofar as use, development or socioeconomic, political andcultural interests are concerned, agents which are fundamental to everystudy in this respect. Also, key factors such as an identity anddialogue with the past, the recreation of the site, consideration as anarchitectural landmark or one which contributes towards the urbanfabric, the link which the building has with its surroundings, the keypoint of who built it or the sensations and subjectivities whichconstructed sites originate… have become key vectors when theexhibition site referred to has been formed. A sharp and visual montagefacilitates the ultimate expression of the analytical referencesmentioned, although it is the spectator who in the end has to completethis reflexive journey based on the personal concerns which determine his/her interests with regard to this contingencia en avance.

----

July 6 - December 9
CARME NOGUEIRA / APOLONIJA SUSTERSIC

Curator: Pablo Fanego, Carme Nogueira

Artists: Carme Nogueira, Apolonija Sustersic

A contemporary art centre is, traditionally, an aseptic space designed for the contemplation of pieces of art, a white cube in which to display them out of context, removed from the rest of the objects found in daily life.
When Apolonija Sustersic and Carme Nogueira began working on a project for the CGAC (Galician Centre for Contemporary Art), their starting point was an intervention at the Doble Espacio, which literally consists of a white cube that stands physically at the heart of the space. When he designed this room, the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza proposed a raised, inaccessible corridor, as a designer’s gesture with a purely aesthetic purpose. Nogueira and Sustersic have set out, through the building of a new architecture, to reconfigure the use for which the space was planned: they have created an intermediate floor which transforms the place into a node of relational exchange.
Their specific intervention consists of a platform which functions as a means of communication with the ground floor and as a research and reading space. The lower space is a place for work, for seminars, workshops and lectures. The hitherto impassable walkway has regained its function by being transformed into a way out of the building, with a bench-vantage point from which the art centre opens out onto the Bonaval park: the landscape, which had always been there as a representation, visible only through an inaccessible doorway, can now be enjoyed from the inside.
With the possibility of new paths through the building, and with a multipurpose social space where previously there was an exhibition room, this long-term intervention allows for the questioning of the asepsis of the white cube, which has been reprogrammed in order to generate expansive effects throughout the museum. The building materials –form timber and a scaffolding structure– suggest a collective use, as well as encouraging an open programme, which is constantly mutating, thus turning the centre itself into a genuine think tank for the carrying out of activities, where the most important thing is exchange, the neutralization of hierarchies and the possibility of new forms of relationships.
The intervention forms part of A trama rururbana, a project carried out by Carme Nogueira and Pablo Fanego for the CGAC –in which Ibon Aranberri has also participated–, which delves, critically and processually, and by means of a range of activities, into the unique configuration of the Galician territory.

Carme Nogueira
During her career as an artist, Carme Nogueira (Vigo, 1970) has worked in the field of corporal criticism of the concept of identity or domestic intimacy with relation to her gender position. She is currently working in the field of subjectivisation processes and the normalising function of spaces through photographs and installations. She took her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca and her postgraduate degree at the University of Vigo. She has been associate professor and researcher at the latter university, and was granted a scholarship by the Hochschule der Künste, in Berlin. She was one of the founding members of the art and culture magazine Fe (1995-1999).
She is also the author of the study La representación como puesta en escena: para una teoría de la mirada (Representation as Staging: Toward a Theory of the Gaze) (Alfons el Magnanim, Valencia, 2001), which examined the confluence between art and the viewer in post-historic representation models, analysing the various cultural and political identity strategies which take place in this relationship. In her most recent work she examines the daily resistance to the imposed uses of the city, through highly complex and specific spatial devices.

Apolonija Sustersic
Apolonija Sustersic (Ljubljana, 1965) ironically describes herself as a professional foreigner, as a professional whose position as an outsider provides her with the legitimate and liberating starting point to her work. In the countries and cities to which she is invited to carry out a project, Sustersic examines the local context in order to observe any conditions or issues it may have and which become the basis for her research process. Her artistic response to context is inseparable from this preliminary work, and frequently consists in the fitting out of meeting or research spaces, or the construction of various communication models.
Apolonija Sustersic’s public intervention projects are conceived as works in progress which develop a rigorous process of critical exploration of the field and carry out a specific action through the eventual formation of a community of users. Her works are situated somewhere between art and public services, and raise various questions regarding the function or the position of art and architecture in contemporary society.

----

Untill September 2

XAVIER TOUBES. BEHIND THE FIELDS

Comisario/a: Vincent Mcgourty

The lyrical fields which mark out the work of Xavier Toubes range in magnification from the smallest, a tile of several centrimetres, to one that seeks expression beyond the bounds of containment.


Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea
Valle Inclán s/n
15704 Santiago de Compostela
Hours:
Tuesday – Sunday: 11:00-20:00. Monday: Closed.

stampa

permanent link