ESTRATOS’’
CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECT MURCIA 2008
31 January to 31 March 2008
The PAC MURCIA Proyecto de Arte Contemporáneo (Contemporary Art Project) is one initiative conceived by the Regional Administration of the Region of Murcia to lay the foundations for a consistent and referential context in the contemporary art field. As well as the exhibition curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, titled ESTRATOS”, opened January 31th including site specific works by Lara Almarcegui, Juan Cruz, Mark Dion, Abraham Poincheval & Laurent Tixador and Marjetica Potrc.
Next Sunday, 2nd March, ABRAHAM POINCHEVAL & LAURENT TIXADOR bring Horizon moins vingt to a close, their adventure in the ESTRATOS’’ project. For 20 days the two artists excavated a tunnel in the Malecón gardens in the city of Murcia, totally cut off from the outside world. After a meticulous prior feasibility study, it was the actual resistance of the earth that determined the speed at which they advanced and the distance travelled. Horizon moins vingt, their most ambitious project to date, in fact brings together two separate lines of investigation explored by this artist duo in previous works, two systems they have daubed “Horizons”—associated with the idea of the journey—and “Symbiosis”—more associated with an act of survival in which it is necessary to acclimatise to the surrounding environment in which the project is developed.
Also in the public space is a work by LARA ALMARCEGUI, occupying a vacant lot in calle San Cristóbal in the centre of Murcia. After an initial study of buildings earmarked for demolition in the city, Lara Almarcegui conceived a direct, physical intervention reflecting on the very substance of the urban context. Her controversial La Montaña de escombros consists of all the debris from the demolition of the building formerly occupying the same plot and shows how a building can end up becoming a space for social and cultural use.
In her site-specific project for Murcia, MARJETICA POTRC explores the use of non-renewable resources such as water, looking at a global problem with a particular focus on this region. A Farm in Murcia: Rainwater Harvesting came about as the result of her contact with an association that creates connections between small farms and encourages the distribution of their fresh produce outside mainstream market channels. The rooftop of a small organic farm near the town of Bullas, in the region of Murcia, are designed to collect rainwater and later deposit it in a biological-purification tank from which it can then be used for irrigation.
One of the contemporary artists who has most lucidly addressed how disciplines like natural history or archaeology itself build our understanding of the world and of the past is the US artist MARK DION. He has created an installation for MAM (Archaeology Museum of Murcia), combining the meticulous reproduction and recovery of elements from Murcia’s former Provincial Prison together with expressly made pieces. In Restoring Authority Dion explores small everyday daily gestures of resistance while satirising the knowledge sanctioned by the institutional authority of the museum.
The idea of the connections with the historical place and with the strata making up the past, is the starting point for the works on show at CENTRO PÁRRAGA and ESPACIO AV, through the classic works of systematic documentation of industrial structures of BERND AND HILLA BECHER; the new topographies of PAUL NOBLE; the graphics and charts of MARK LOMBARDI; the photographic research of BLEDA Y ROSA on the cities that were the origins of various cultures making up our own cultural substratum; the layers of temporality that JIMMIE DURHAM unveils through the dissection of a tree; CYPRIEN GAILLARD’s fascination for entropic landscapes; the updating of failed utopias carried out by PAULINA OLOWSKA, the small narrations or forgotten and unknown real scenarios explored by JOACHIM KOESTER, or the motifs from the past VERNE DAWSON uses to reread the present, provide different versions of time and our way of experiencing it, in a more personal, and sometimes even autobiographical way as in the works by KEITH TYSON, ILANA HALPERIN, GREGOR SCHNEIDER or DIEGO PERRONE.
At SALA VERÓNICAS, ALLAN McCOLLUM is showing The Dog From Pompei, a historical piece in his trajectory, consisting of a replica of pieces produced from a plaster cast of the famous “chained dog” at the Vesuvius Museum, that was smothered by the ashes of the Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD.
The former church of SAN ESTEBAN is the venue for the premiere in Spain of the latest project by EVE SUSSMAN & THE RUFUS CORPORATION, The Rape of The Sabine Women, a video-installation on that Roman myth. Meanwhile, at SANTA CLARA, JUAN CRUZ presents A Semblance of Activity, a video plus text work revolving around a historical review from a totally personal perspective.
Garnering great public success and widespread media repercussion, ESTRATOS’’ remains open through March 31st, when the exhibition catalogue will be presented. The catalogue will provide an overview of the archaeology of this project and will include everything happened during the time the project has remained open. Together with the catalogue, CENDEAC will release the second of the publications made in relation to this project, with contributions by the participants at the Heterochronies seminars including Ilana Halperin, Allan McCollum, Nicolas Bourriaud, Laurent Poincheval & Abraham Tixador, José Luis Molinuevo, Mary Ann Doane, Bleda y Rosa, Peter Osborne, Miguel Ángel Hernández, Manuel Cruz, José Luis Vilacañas, Pamela M. Lee and Gary Shapiro.
For further information, please contact:
Press Office
T. (+34) 902 106 504
info@pacmurcia.es