Tacita Dean
De Mar en Mar
Until 12 January 2014
Botín Foundation
Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, 3
39003 Santander
Spain
T +34 942 226 072
info [at] fundacionbotin.org
Curator: Vicente Todolí
The exhibition De Mar en Mar by artist Tacita Dean, which has been curated by Vicente Todolí, president of the Foundation’s Visual Arts Advisory Board, follows as a continuation of the workshop directed by the artist at Villa Iris earlier in the year.
De Mar en Mar is a unique opportunity to see all the artist’s sea works presented together for the first time in a place with a fine maritime history of its own, Santander. The sea has played a crucial role in the work of Tacita Dean, especially earlier on in her career. Drawn to it for its narrative possibilities, the sea has stayed a continual source of inspiration to her and the works in De Mar en Mar weave together a series of stories that are connected by the role the sea plays in them, whether it be as backdrop to the narrative or as its main focus.
The works in this exhibition date from 1994 to 2008 and bring together a rich diversity of films, objects and drawings including a rare opportunity to see the installation Girl Stowaway in its complete form, two significant series of blackboard drawings, the 16mm films, several photographic works, some of them newly produced for this exhibition, the artist’s book projects and other ephemera related to the sea.
Tacita Dean’s exhibition reminds us of the cultural importance that the sea has had in our history and in our imagination, recalling a not too distant time when, pre-satellite, the sea was a still place unknowable to us, a place of mystery where one could still get profoundly and existentially lost.
The book De Mar en Mar. The sea works of Tacita Dean accompanies the exhibition and collects together into compendium form documentation and images of all the sea and related works, some of which are being published for the first time. It also includes the artist’s writings on the subject alongside a newly commissioned text by Nuria Enguita and a reprint of Simon Crowhurst’s beautiful text from 2001. Designed by Martyn Ridgewell, the artist’s long-term collaborator and friend, this book is as close to a complete anthology of the sea works that it is possible to make at this time and is therefore a fitting extension to this exhibition and an important research publication in its own right.
