Man has always seen in other kingdoms, animal and plant ones, ideal that in his own are difficult to find in its pure state: the nobility of the dog, the beauty and freshness of the flower as love symbol… But if we pause at the latter and defoliat it without compassion, soon is revealed the illusion of these utopian images. Unlike the leaves, that age with dignity, according to Georges Bataille, flowers wither like old and snobbish overly made-up widows, […]
Drawing lines in space, threading stories, making webs … the act of weaving has the quality of being able to include other arts, from drawing to architecture, through writing and music. One of the recurring images of the spinner in mythology is that of weaver of destiny: both the Greek Moiras and their Norse correlates. But the warp that we will trace in this writing defies this idea of predetermined destiny, because our plot will […]
A and B on their knees slowly approaching each other, A drooling and B wiping the drool, repeating the operation until A can’t drool anymore. This was one of the acts or chapters of Comfort zones activity that Allan Kaprow presented in the mythical Vandrés gallery in a city, Madrid, living a period of suspense (1975), expectant before the impending death of Franco. CA2M (Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo) now recuperates that event managed by Fernando Vijande, which meant the […]
Looking at Teresa Margolles work as a whole, we observe that it underlies in it an inherent processual logic, which, interlinking from project to project becomes stronger, and it goes against the systemic logic of capitalism in its gore side (as the also Mexican Sayak Valencia rightly called it). Thus, against the trivialisation of crime she claims grieving for each body, facing the anonymity and reification of the victims she opposes their individuation, in front […]
The same gray spreading through highways, tunnels and level crossings, manufacturing plants and new construction blocks. Suburban landscapes that only tread on infinite number of wheels, unavailable for the passer-by. Edges of cement more and more extensive that are repeated without hardly variation all over the world. Also the boundaries, increasingly high, longer, more impassable, are a model that extends through the world with few variations: containment barriers, electrified wire fences, motion sensors… In both […]
Winckelmann revolutionized the historiography of ancient art by turning to the mystique of erotic contemplation. The artists’ school was in the gyms, he writes as he imagines Fidias going to the stadium to study the harmonious proportions of the athletes, their muscles in tension, the choreographic beauty of the struggles in the arena… Also, he figured Socrates in the arena recruiting young ephebos to whom to instruct in the art of the temperance. The contemplation […]
Miss Beige is an inveterate flaneur, wearing out her shoe (beige?) soles, wandering around bland neighborhoods, taking photos before the lowered blinds of a sex shop (Mundo fantástico), next to a parking meter (La bella y la bestia) or between ugly suburban buildings, because she knows that beauty is elsewhere. Almost as if following the advice of Walter Benjamin to experience the street creatively and escape of the clusters that moves robotic by pre-determined paths, […]
Lee Lozano was an artist who didn’t want to be one more piece in the gear of art, who by her blood and guts came to choose what type of buyer were suitable to acquire her work; who decided where, how and when to exhibit; who fixed the moment of get to the top of her career and the term to finish it. Stubborn and irreverent, in 1970 managed to show in the most prestigious […]
