Curator: Rosa Martínez

“La Caixa” Foundation’s Madrid Exhibition Hall. January 30th to March 14th, 2004

In his video installations and projections, Navridis makes use of elements that are lightweight such as latex, or ethereal like breath, in order to articulate the relationships of beings with the world. The main theme of his work is air, and his obsession centres on visualising the processes of human breathing as a basic ability of all living beings. What he does could be deemed as “breathe sculpture” given that his characters mould spaces, enact existential tensions and make the invisible visible through breathing. Conceptually, this objective corresponds with that of modern art which endeavours to reflect the impossible or the prohibited from a moral, psychological or physical viewpoint, while also presenting it as something which is possible.

Set against the backdrop of ARCO’04, which has Greece as its guest country, “la Caixa” Foundation’s Madrid Exhibition Hall serves as the venue for an exhibition focused on Navridis’ most representative artistic output over the last ten years, including the Difficult Breaths series which was especially created for the occasion. This exhibition, comprised of five video installations and forty-two photographs, has been curated by Rosa Martínez.

The Nikos Navridis exhibition, organized and produced by “la Caixa” Foundation, can be visited at the “la Caixa” Foundation’s Exhibition Hall in Madrid (C/ Serrano, 60), from January 30th to March 14th, 2004.

Official opening: Thursday, January 29th at 8 p.m.
”La Caixa” Foundation Exhibition Hall
Calle Serrano, 60 (Madrid)
www.fundacio.lacaixa.es
Hours: from Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sundays and holidays, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Admission free of charge

For further information and graphic materials, please contact Glòria Cid Gerlach.
Communications Department of ”la Caixa” Foundation.
E-mail: gmcid.fundacio@lacaixa.es
Telephone no.: 93 404 61 51. Fax: 93 404 61 16 / 60 80

La entrada Nikos Navridis, La Caixa Foundation, Madrid, España, 2004 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Curator: Rosa Martínez
Reales Atarazanas. Sevilla.
From September 16th to October 31st. 2004

Pilar Albarracín is one of the most significant artists of the contemporary Andalusian scene. Her productions have focused on the analysis of dominant narratives and, specifically, on the clichés which represent Andalusian identity; not from a remote
and intellectualised perspective, but through an emotional and subversive immersion in the anthropology of the everyday.
Folklore and popular traditions, food rituals, religious myths, and women’s role in the distribution of power or collective festivals such as bullfighting, are critically distorted in the mirror of her reflections. Many of her works have a hypnotic rhythm which grows until it reaches a moment of ecstasy. Then the spectator suddenly awakens ‘with a revelation or a thud’ snapping them out of their intellectual and sensorial slumber and forcing them to call into question their preconceptions.

Pilar Albarracín is one of the most significant artists of the contemporary Andalusian scene. Her productions have focused on the analysis of dominant narratives and, specifically, on the clichés which represent Andalusian identity; not from a remote and intellectualised perspective, but through an emotional and subversive immersion in the anthropology of the everyday. Folklore and popular traditions, food rituals, religious myths, and women’s role in the distribution of power or collective festivals such as bullfighting, are critically distorted in the mirror of her reflections. Many of her works have a hypnotic rhythm which grows until it reaches a moment of ecstasy. Then the spectator suddenly awakens ‘with a revelation or a thud’ snapping them out of their intellectual and sensorial slumber and forcing them to call into question their preconceptions.

In all her performances, it is Albarracín herself who personifies the female characters that transform her into a peasant, an immigrant, a battered woman, housewife, flamenco dancer or singer. By putting her personal energy on the line she becomes fully involved in her multiple personalities. From her early interventions such as Sin título. (Sangre en la calle) [Untitled. Blood in the Street] (1992), which featured women thrown out onto the streets of Seville after having suffered some bloody incident, to more recent works such as viva España [Long Live Spain] (2004), which takes place in the streets and squares of Madrid, an unquestionable desire to integrate conscious and unconscious, feeling and reason, body and soul, private and public, runs through Pilar Albarracín’s creations. This is why she plays with the surprise factor and gives interactive installations or improvised performances that are put forward as shock therapy in order to bring out collective demons.

Through her stagings, she focuses on the woman as the repository for commands of submission and explores the different facets of a specific situation of economic and social development in Andalusia, in Spain and, by extension, in the manifold contemporary combats between tradition and modernity. There are several works by Pilar Albarracín that focus on folklore and, specifically, on flamenco, which has been, and remains, an artistic way of expressing the social pain of a people. Most important among them are Prohibido el cante (Singing Prohibited), that was performed in the year 2000, and Muro de jilgueros (Goldfinch Wall), a wall installation created specifically for her exhibition at the Reales Atarazanas in Seville in 2004. If singing gives voice to sorrows, dance connects the body to the rhythms which interweave eroticism and death. Dancing is a way ‘to step outside oneself’ which can be beautifully codified in choreographies and geometries or brings out the shapeless movements that liberate what is repressed, as La cabra [The Goat] (2001) and Bailaré sobre tu tumba [I Will Dance on your Grave] (2004) show.

Artistically, Albarracín’s productions question the absolutist pretensions of minimalism as a hegemonic language and do not subject themselves to the anglosaxon mainstream. Her work connects with the poetics of excess which the baroque, kitsch or pop represent and link up with a Spanish tradition of criticism which contains Goya’s enlightened positions and Valle Inclán’s theatre of the grotesque. Her work reflects the flash of madness, understood as a form of lucidity, and destabilises false identities. It is imbued with a generosity which conceives the work, not as a documentary transcription of what exists, but as a form of
production of thought and life, as a gift which needs a reply from the other, to whom direct or indirect requests are being made for new forms of action, love and conscience, or, in other words, involvement.

Rosa Martínez
Curator of the exhibition

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La entrada Pilar Albarracín, Reales Atarazanas, Sevilla, 2004 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.