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23/4/2009

Koenraad Dedobbeleer / Asier Mendizabal

ProjecteSD, Barcelona

Koenraad Dedobbeleer (Halle, 1975, Belgium) and Asier Mendizabal (Ordizia, 1973, Guipúzcoa) mainly work in sculpture and installation. Although their work emerges from different concepts and deals with different subjects, they have a shared interest in forms issuing from reality. A certain notion of “displacement” as a means to abstraction, can also be found in the work of both artists. Deconstruction, substitution and, in some cases, a certain symbology, are notions appearing in their works, as well as references to modernism.

Dedobbeleer and Mendizabal met in 1997. Their personal relationship, affinities and the profound understanding that they have of eachother's work were strong reasons to propose them to do a show together. This is also an excellent way to introduce them, both artists of the gallery, for the first time in ProjecteSD. The exhibition now presented is not a project in collaboration but a challenging attempt to elaborate a presentation of works in the exhibition space. Every artist develops his own work individually, but at the same time shares the physicality and the concept of one space with all its limitations, using its potential for interaction, dialogue and/or friction. Individual elements are arranged in a discursive constellation. One piece of work comments on another, while others may appear to raise contradiction. This is the very first exhibition of Koenraad Dedobbeleer and Asier Mendizabal together and also the first time that a duo show is presented in ProjecteSD, which has been keen in promoting this artistic dialogue.

The installation consists of 33 black and white photographs, 2 colour photographs, a text and a print on photographic paper taken from an image obtained from Google which locates, in an aerial view, the area in question. Linked both conceptually and formally to his earlier photographic series Mud, in Nomads Ribas maps a territory building again a grid, as it would be done in an archaeological survey, showing with accuracy and great attention to detail a barren image of space. The subject of the urban periphery and its social problematic, present since his beginnings in the work of Ribas, is approached in this new series in a much less obvious but probably a lot more eloquent way. In this abstract, limitless, almost neutralized cartography, the reality of urban space disappears to illustrate the remains of the assaulted landscape.

An attentive observer of reality, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, bases his work on the presentation of objects and spaces which accommodate tenuous transformations. He translates elements of architecture, urban fixtures, everyday objects and spaces into his works. Koenraad Dedobbeleer describes his work as “on stand-by”, a many-facetted and open experiment, a non-scientific study of possibilities. For his first presentation at ProjecteSD he shows new graphic and sculptural pieces of different scales and materials. Ideas such as object and documentation, contents or meaning as affected by display, or the idea of sculpture as an artefact, an object, relic, memory, or an obstacle, are found in Dedobbeleer's presentation. In two of the works presented, he uses concrete found vessels which have been altered by the artist and that can be linked to another “concrete fake” sculpture and confront the viewer with questions on how an object or an idea can undergo changes and simultaneously exist within different realities and interpretations. Also disquieting is the transformed replica of a plastic cup made in nickel apparently lying randomly on the gallery's floor as a disposable object, which is in reality impossible to take, as its ironic title, Various Difficulties Entailed in the Act of Recollection, indicates. Gradually destroying what was there long before us is a small paper sculpture which somehow links to another work in the exhibition, With the Patient Lack of Interest, a photographic image of another paper sculpture enclosed in a framing devise which gives it a three dimensional quality, as it questions on the idea of object, display and context.

Asier Mendizabal's work pays most attention to the relations between form, discourse and ideology and has been said to be related to the constructivist sculpture with its roots in the abstract utopia of the first decades of the 20th century (1). The question of the sign and its materiality and identification as a social and political emblem also has a place among the artist’s interests. Through sculpture, photography, video, textual or graphic works, Mendizabal gives a view on ideology based on the mise en scène of the concepts or structures shaped by it. The works by Mendizabal cannot be interpreted at first sight as they accumulate layers of meaning and sometimes refer to multiple ideas which are not of common knowledge. Whereas in some works a direct connotation in the recent history and reality of the Basque country can be read, in others he chooses referents which belong to historic or ideological legacies. This is the case of his new work presented in ProjecteSD for the first time, La Ruota Dentata (2009). La Ruota Dentata, is an iron and concrete sculpture assembled in four parts, resembling an overdimensioned cogwheel. Through this simple structure, the work refers to a precise icon. Ruota dentata was the name and logo of the broadsheet published by futurist artist Vinicio Paladini in 1927, and manifesto of the left-wing radical Imaginist movement founded by him. Mendizabal rescues this symbol of an almost forgotten marginal art movement in the age of modernism, and gives it a prominent scale as in a fetishist attempt to reuse a form of representation, not free of any intention.

Also a reference to the “aesthetics of the machine” defended by some of the futurist artists, can be read in this sculpture. In a less radical but as simple gesture, in a smaller scale, a series of wooden engraved plates are also shown. Mendizabal collects in them a series of national emblems and replicates only their perimetral outlines as engravings. The symbols are then difficult to identify. They appear as codes or undecipherable calligraphic signs. They conform an abstract composition which conceals its real meaning as it is stripped from any existing connotation.

(1) Bartomeu Marí in Asier Mendizabal, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2008

Koenraad Dedobbeleer (Halle, 1975, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels. Recent exhibitions include shows at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany (2007), Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp (2008), Mai 36 in Zurich (2008), Carreras-Múgica, Bilbao (2009) and his exhibition in collaboration with Rita McBride presented at the Frac Bourgogne in Dijon, the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland and at the PMMK (Provinciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst) in Ostend (Belgium), 2008-2009. He is preparing a solo show for the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld as recipient of the Mies van der Rohe Award, instituted by the city of Krefeld (July 2009).

Asier Mendizabal (Ordizia, 1973, Guipúzcoa) lives and works in Bilbao. Recent exhibitions include shows at Artis Den Bosch, The Netherlands (2007-2008), Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao (2007), Carreras-Múgica, Bilbao (2007), Fundación Marcelo Botín, Santander (2007) and his solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (2008). He was awarded the Gure Artea prize in 2008. He is preparing a show for Artium (Vitoria) next Fall, which will itinerate to other international venues.

Both artists will have a solo exhibition at the Fundaçao Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Culturgest, Lisbon next Fall 2009.

With the support of the Flemish Region and Community

For further documentation and visuals, please contact:
Silvia Dauder, sd@projectesd.com
Carolina Núñez, carolina@projectesd.com

ProjecteSD Barcelona
pg. Mercader, 8 Baixos 1 08008 Barcelona

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