Mi Vida. From Heaven to Hell. Life experiences in art from MUSAC Collection
March 27 – May 17, 2009
Curators:
Agustín Pérez Rubio – Zsolt Petrányi
Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest
1146 Budapest, Dózsa György u. 37.
Mi Vida. From Heaven to Hell. Life experiences in art from MUSAC Collection, the biggest exhibition of its Collection outside Spain up until today
The biggest exhibition of MUSAC Collection shown up until today outside the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León will take place between March 27 and May 17, 2009 at Mücsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest. Under the title Mi Vida. From Heaven to Hell. Life experiences in art from MUSAC Collection, the show will exhibit a selection of works which stress the relations between art and life from different standpoints. More than forty artists will show their works in approximately 2.500 square meters. Thus, Mi Vida… joins previous shows of MUSAC Collection in institutions like Santralistambul (Istambul) or MACUF (A Coruña, Spain); fairs like Paris Photo (Paris); or festivals like Hay Festival (Segovia) or Benicássim International Festival.
Life itself has always been the central point of artistic expression. Through different ages artists have reflected their experiences and opinions through their artworks. This phenomenon is the key to understanding art: the things the artist sees are somehow related to the life he or she leads.
The exhibition Mi Vida shows contemporary pieces which underline this relation between art and life from different standpoints. The works, which are all coming from MUSAC Collection, bring together two points of view: on one side, the hedonist and psychological nature of the everyday life; and on the other, decisive factors such as geographical, historical and political circumstances under which conflicts and existential problems are the centre of human existence.
Our world is divided in two different extremes. In one of them the economical possibilities of the individual enable a life where quality and investment give the prospect of a future, while on the other half the present tense is the only reference point and every other factors are ephemeral or unforeseeable. These two contradictory statuses often coexist in one geographical point of the globe, as they are not defined geographically, but they define the horizon of what we call human existence.
The show is constructed departing form these different standpoints. As we believe that the aforementioned „extremes” are not isolated poles, we are inviting the visitor to a journey where the differences between these extremes can be seen, as well as the parallelisms and contradictions. This way, in the first rooms we aim to recreate a series of positive statements through works by Pipilotti Rist, as a paradox of a new Paradise, Kimsooja with her calm installation or Tabaimo with her human tattoo landscape. Also in this part of the exhibition the visitor will find „Brighten your mind”, the positive slogan by Emese Benczur; Jesper Just and his emotive exteriorization of feelings, as well as Mother by Candice Breitz, not to forget the social project-piece by Alicia Framis, Bloodsushibank.
Following this part of the exhibition, we find other rooms where statements become more ambiguous and pain and pleasure engage in a conversation the same way they do in our daily life. Thus, hedonist aspects present in the pieces by Ángel Marcos or Massimo Vitali confront this vital landscape with political aspects in Zhan Huan’s works or Carmela Garcia’s fictionalized female world. It is also interesting to observe institutions such as the family and relationships. Friends, partners, couples, etc. have a critical treatment in the works by Enrique Marty, Tracey Moffat, MP & MP Rosado, Muntean/Rosemblum and Ryan McGinley, together with more nostalgic works which reflect experience or the effects of time, as in the case of Carles Congost or Wolfgang Tillmans.
The following room will allow the spectator to contemplate the bizarre world of human obsessions, reflected with brutality and hilarity by the drawings by Marcel Dzama, Fernado Renes or Alvaro Oyarzun. This way, in opposition to the first rooms, Mi Vida reaches a point where critical statements about the human condition prevail, showing these aspects on a wide variety of media and contents. These are the rooms dedicated to violence or the situation of women’s rights, as shown in the pieces by Joana Vasconcelos, Abigail Lazkoz, Shirin Neshat, Marina Abramovich. To summarize all, at the last big room of the show, the piece UN Miniature by Thomas Hirschhorn will be displayed. Around this piece other works, which reflect the brutality of wars, will be shown: Simeon Saiz Ruiz’s media- painting of Kosovo or the photografies by Ángel de la Rubia about Balkan War, not to forget the Irak images by Luc Delhaye. There will also be other works that show diverse political and social contexts within the past and the present by Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Zwelethu Mentewtua or Cristina Garcia Rodero.
This end of the exhibition, on the one hand gives Mi Vida the opportunity to show the most aggressive and brutal parts of the human condition, but it also communicates a small reflect of hope, of help and conscience, because it is the moral and ethics of the artist which are mirrored through his/ her works. Therefore, at the end, all the angles and viewpoints create a whole. It is important to take into account that the works displayed in this exhibition communicate a message that rises above the particular facts the individual works are speaking about: the general moral values of humanity in which there are no big differences and counterparts.
This way, Mi Vida is conceived not just as and exhibition of the works form a collection, nor as a show of individual pieces, but as a proposition, through an artistic discourse, of awareness about the world we live in, about the present and how we deal with it.
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