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g-mk | galerija miroslav kraljevic: Asier Mendizabal - �Prizemljeno� - 19 Sept 2011 to 18 Oct 2011 Current Exhibition |
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Asier Mendizabal
Untitled (Targu Jiu) |
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ASIER MENDIZABAL Prizemljeno Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic September 16 - October 18, 2011 Exhibition opening and discussion with the artist: Friday, September 16, 7pm Asier Mendizabal’s works presented at the exhibition ‘Prizemljeno’ at Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic focus on the historical relations between form and ideology, primarily through analyzing the meanings of abstract utopian universalism and its historical reception. Through different media (sculpture, text, photography and collage) Mendizabal is looking into popular and artistic practices and the configurations surrounding the relations between politics and art in public sculptures, particularly in the politically complex territory of the Basque country. The exhibition at G-MK points to the mechanisms between abstract modernism and ideology and the ways in which the narratives around it are reshaped through the historical and political transformations; becoming, through rehabilitation, a constitutive element in the new political narratives or being erased from the public discourse. Numerous elements of Mendizabal’s practice correspond strongly with the history of Croatian/Yugoslav affirmation of the progressive high modernism, its universalism and the issues surrounding its ideological neutrality, as with the amnesia and suppression in instituting new paradigms in the nation state building in the 1990s. The dynamics between the works in the exhibition and the local context in which they are on this occasion presented, point to rethinking the subversive potential of abstract modernism and the complexities of the relations between art and politics outside the Western, master paradigm. The specific context of the Basque modernism inherently evokes the question to which extent its abstract universality contained also a hidden, mythical identitarian idiom. Otxarkoaga (M-L) deals with the destiny of the busts of Marx and Lenin that the citizens of the working class neighborhood in Bilbao adapted from the indoor to public sculptures unintentionally evoking the forms of the Basque modernist tradition, especially the work of Jorge Oteiza. Targu Jiu is relates to the case of Brancusi's Eternal Column, a public sculpture in a Romanian village of artist's birth, and looks into the reasons for which this etheral, abstract monument became the subject of several violent attacks and an attempt of destruction. The piece Hernani revisits the case from the Basque country, when following the governmental decision to ban naming the Hernani park by the name of a deceased ETA fighter, the judges and the police incidently also removes an earlier public monument from the park. The case of the mistaken identification of the abstract slupture as a monlith erected in honour of the ETA member becomes symptomatic of the ways the particular idiom of the abstraction informes certain collective immaginary. Asier Mendizabal (Ordizia 1973) is an artist based in Bilbao. His practice, fundamentally attached to sculpture as program, is resolved in diverse media and procedures, often including written word. The materiality of the signs and languages that create the representations and forms of the collective serves him to try a reading of phenomena like identity and ideological relations that eludes conventional interpretations. Multiple crossings between the specific codes of modernity with its actualisations as popular culture in politics, cinema or music conform the most recurrent references in his work. He has exhibited individually, among others, in Artis den-Bosch, DAE in San Sebastian, MACBA Barcelona, Culturgest in Lisbon and Museo Nacional Centro de arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. He has taken part in group shows such as Chacun a son Gôut, at Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa; Després de la notícia, at CCCB Barcelona; Manifesta 5, the Taipei biennial; Insiders, at CAPC Bordeaux; Flüchtige Zeiten, at Westfälischer Kunstverein, On Handlung, Bucharest Biennial and ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale. He is currently working on an extensive survey exhibition in London's Raven Row. Supported by: Ministry of Culture, Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb – Office for Culture, Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain in Zagreb Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic Subiceva 29, Zagreb www.g-mk.hr t. + 385 1 45 92 696 Tue- Fri 12 – 19, Sat 11- 13 |
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