DC -- Embassy of Spain -- Spain Arts & Culture -- Lawn Exhibit: Transformando lo físico:
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- Description of Pictures: Transformando lo físico
“Transformando lo Físico” invites 12 Spanish creators to come up with 12 different artistic proposals for the façade of our building that will be shown monthly in the garden, allowing a dialog between the building and its representation.
The security measures derived from the pandemic have forced us to rethink spaces, experiences and relationships, not only between people but also between people and space. Access to culture and the artistic experience itself now require new scenarios and approaches.
Although virtual reality is not a new phenomenon, in the current context its prominence is inevitable. We have transferred many of our physical and everyday experiences to the screen, and access to knowledge and culture has also been relocated to the virtual environment.
How can you describe a building without ever having seen it, without having walked through its doors?
Transforming the Physical Environment has asked twelve Spanish creators to define our building without visiting it first, at least not in the traditional sense. To do this, the artists will work on the intervention of a photograph of the façade of the building which will be placed in the garden.
The sensitive experience will be replaced by research and the possibility of generating intuitive knowledge, interpreting the architecture with values that go beyond form and extend to narrative or historical approaches or the relationship/interference with the environment.
Spectators will complete this project through active contemplation, where the layout of the piece shall allow the image and the façade to be observed simultaneously while also encouraging the viewer to look for differences and games between what can be seen in situ and the reading made by the artist. The piece is not a fixed composition, but a dialog between the real thing and its representation.
The selected artists are looking for radically different gazes and working environments: (Hybrid) approaches from the visual arts, design, drawing, architecture or mediation. However, a certain common ingredient can be seen in all of them: a playful and curious spirit that places the attention on processes and relates to everyday materials; a sensitive, warm and affectionate approach; one that is kind, even domestic. Whether it is in a more evident or more veiled way, all of them show an interest in space, understood from the architectural or the narrative point of view, from the traditional limits of representation, or from the relationship with the city and the environment.
HEY Studio, Iñaki Chávarri, E1000, Luis Úrculo, Tamara Arroyo, José Ramón Ais, Colectivo JÁ!, José Quintanar, Yolanda Mosquera, Javier Jaén, Susana Blasco and María Jérez have come up with twelve different answers to the same question, constructing a multi-faceted and multi-linear narrative of our building, in which the distinctive profile of its walls is completed with the forms that have shaped its history and its uses.
—Ana Bustelo, curator
Selected artists
Each month Transformando Lo Físico will present an artistic proposal by the following artists:
* Hey Studio – April 2021
* Iñaki Chávarri – May 2021
* E1000 – June 2021
* Luis Úrculo – July 2021
* Tamara Arroyo– August 2021
* José Ramón Ais – September 2021
* Colectivo JÁ! – October 2021
* José Quintanar – November 2021
* Yolanda Mosquera – December 2021
* Javier Jaén – January 2022
* Susana Blasco – February 2022
* María Jerez – March 2022
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- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- TRANSF_210719_01.JPG: Transformando lo Fisico
Transformando lo fisico has asked twelve Spanish creators to define our building without visiting it first! To do this, the artists are working on the intervention of a photograph of the building's facade that will be placed in the garden. Whether it is in a more evident or more veiled way, all of them show an interest in space, understood from the architectural or the narrative point of view, from the traditional limits of representation, or from the relationship with the city and the environment. Spectators will complete this project through active contemplation, as the piece is not a fixed composition, but a dialog between the building and its representation.
- TRANSF_210719_04.JPG: Luis Urculo
4 / 12
2.568.310 Landscapes
Suiseki is a stone that in its natural state resembles a landscape.
Generally, it should be of a size that allows it to be easily transported, ideally with just one hand. If it were necessary to pick it up between two people, its size would be excessive and could only be considered in the case of a really exceptional rock, although in China it is possible to see huge stones that need to be moved with a crane.
By studying the image of the building, and taking it from 3,781 miles away, one tours the façade and the surroundings from a position that generates an interpretation of what things can or could be. The garden, which takes a back seat to such an emblematic building, greatly aroused my interest due to the tension generated by the inertness of the construction versus the idea of “landscaping.”
From there, the proposal was born, valuing the possibility of multiple projects, not a final image. In this place multiple micro-landscapes coexist, suisekis of different natures, in multiple stones and materials that form this garden. The stone shown in the image is made from the imagination, created digitally from several stones collected in various places, forming a reflection of a landscape and the opportunity that this garden houses, as we guide our gaze.
This garden is a blank cube where you can imagine and find 2,568,310 landscapes.
About Luis Urculo
Luis Urculo lives and works between Madrid and Mexico City. His practice takes anthropology, archeology and criminology as a main reference of phenomenology to create lines of investigation based on the idea of reconstruction of timelines, uncertain materiality, imprecise descriptions, ambiguity and interpretations of reality.
Fiction and representations of diverse domestic geographies form the scenarios to create diverse video works, using amateur choreographies with objects to represent his ideas as manifestos.
His latest investigations are based on the idea of “karaoke.” He works with the absence of lines of information to create new bodies of work where there are always missing parts, images or explanations, to create a sense of complicity with the viewers, who in turn interpret or reconstruct his pieces –as tourists, archeologists, or karaoke singers in a bar.
Urculo is also interested in a redefinition of the possible tools, procedures and formats within architecture, focusing on the representation and the narrative of the invisible that defines the space.
He has exhibited at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Art Institute (Chicago), MAXXI (Rome), MAC Museum of Contemporary Art of Santiago (Chile), Tokyo Wonder Site (Japan), Storefront for Art & Architecture (New York), XIth Venice Biennial – Spanish pavilion, Lisbon Triennale, La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Centro Pecci (Prato), Matadero (Madrid), Arredondo/ Arozarena (Mexico DF), Max Estrella (Madrid), The Popular Workshop (San Francisco), Montevideo Biennial„ Parque Cultural Valparaiso (Chile), National Glyptoteque (Athens).
He has been invited as a visiting professor and lecturer at Columbia University (New York), UCLA (Los Angeles), HEAD (Geneve), Danish Center for Architecture (Copenhagen), Vitra Design Museum at Boisbuchet, Graham Foundation (Chicago), Universidad de Talca (Chile), INDA Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok), Universidad Anahuac (México DF), Umeå University (Sweden), SOMA (Mexico), Kent State University (Florence), Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo), ENSAG (Grenoble), LIGA (Mexico), Istambul Biennial, Espacio Monte (Buenos Aires), Elisava (Barcelona), ETSAM (Madrid) and EPS (Alicante).
Since 2010 he has been the co-director and curator of the Living room Festival together with Maria Jerez, Juan Dominguez and Cuqui Jerez.
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