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Miguel Angel Gaüeca, 09 Kidology, Serie Kidology. |
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Miguel Angel Gaüeca, 12 Kidology, Serie Kidology.
Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Nobody knows my dad died yesterday, Serie Me, Myself and I, 2002, 100 x 100 cm.
Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Feathers (Elsa, Marcel and Me), Serie Objects and Things, 2009, 125 x 125 cm.
Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Nobody Knows Vermeer Told Me This, Serie Me, Myself and I, 2004, 125 x 125 cm. |
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ARTIUM ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibition by Miguel Ángel Gaüeca Deals, Shapes and Void, an exhibition in which the Bizkaia-born artist exhibits in some 100 works a considerable part of the work he has developed over the last eight years. The exhibition contains four series of photographs and a selection of objects and sculptures, created on many occasions to form part of the photographic images Through these images, of great technical quality and staged with painstaking care, Gaüeca invites the spectator to create relationships between different facets of the existence of the artist, not strictly as such, but as a contemporary individual. There is also an exhibition catalogue containing texts by Susan Bright, photographic exhibition curator, and François Piron, curator and art critic. Deals, Shapes and Void is produced by ARTIUM, with the support of Euskaltel, Ministry of Culture, Vitoria City Council, Regional Government of Alava. In Deals, Shapes and Void, Miguel Ángel Gaüeca (Gatika, Bizkaia, 1967) presents almost one hundred photographs belonging to four series, entitled Objects & Things, Kidology, The Gaüeca Portrait Gallery, and Me, Myself and I, all of which have been created over the last eight years. Although the first thing visitors will find in an anteroom in which anarchy seems to reign supreme, with old packing boxes scattered over the floor, on which photographic prints lean in a disorderly fashion, what is true is that the nucleus of the exhibition is around the corner, in the main gallery. Here, in the half-light, on a large cube of almost four metres square, the images corresponding to four series of photographs are projected according to a specific rhythm, each photograph on each of its vertical sides. Visitors move progressively from one series to another. First, the photographs from the series Objects & Things, a contemporary re-reading of a classical genre in the History of Art, the still life. Linked traditionally to interpretations of the ephemeral nature of material goods, Gaüeca suggests new considerations concerning objects, their symbology and decorative qualities. In the second series, Kidology, the spectator witnesses, as Susan Bright points out in the exhibition catalogue, "a voyage inside what might be the imagination of children or (...) their conflict with reality", and considers the influence that this conflict may have on building their life as adults. The Gaüeca Portrait Gallery is projected on the third side of the cube. Formally, this represents a review of the genre of the portrait and an insight into the realm of the social relations of the artist. These portraits, which include photographs of curators such as Xabier Arakistain and Beatriz Herráez, artists such as Bene Bergado and Eduardo Sourrouille or musicians such as Fangoria, among many others, have been published as a permanent section in the magazine Aux. For this reason, they propose a parallel reflection on the mass media and the dissemination of art and the art market. Visitors complete their journey around the cube with the series Me, Myself and I, once again, a re-reading of a traditional genre, the self portrait. Using the elements typical of advertising language and design, with superimposed logos and phrases, Miguel Ángel Gaüeca reflects on different clichés referring to the personality of the artist and, in essence, makes an ironic analysis of the building of the contemporary individual. Beyond this cube, the exhibition includes a selection of objects and sculptures, many of which visitors will recognise from the photographs they have just seen, a kind of Renaissance Chamber of Wonders. With Deals, Shapes and Voids, Miguel Ángel Gaüeca, graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Basque Country, presents his first major one-man show in a museum, although his works are present in some of the leading public and private art collections in Spain: Reina Sofía National Museum, Dos de Mayo Art Centre, Montehermoso Cultural Centre, BILBAOarte Foundation and the ARTIUM Centre-Museum among the former, and the Coca Cola Foundation Collection, the Juan Redón Collection, the Pilar Citoler Collection and the Purificación García Collection among the latter. Gaüeca's most recent one-man shows were organised in Zaragoza (Me and My Things, Spectrum Sotos Gallery, 2007), Pamplona (Super Artist Forever, Carlos III Gallery, 2006), Bilbao (Rarities and Curiosities, Espacio Marzana Gallery, 2005), and Madrid (My Love Affair with Art, Espacio Mínimo Gallery, 2004). His one-man show at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre, Me, Myself and I was organised in 2003. His work has also been shown in collective exhibitions in MadridFoto 2009, the DA2 in Salamanca, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Santa Mónica Art Centre in Barcelona and the Rekalde Gallery in Bilbao, as well as the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, the CCC- Centre Creation Contemporaine in Tours, and the Mücsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest, among others. Miguel Ángel Gaüeca has taken part in the ARCO art fair every year since 1997 with the Espacio Mínimo Gallery of Madrid. |
Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Pepe y Luis, Serie The Gaüeca Portrait Gallery. |
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Robert Rauschenberg, Mercury Zero Summer Glut, 1987, Assembled metal, 10,625 x 17,5 x 8,5", Private Collection. |
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Robert Rauschenberg, Money Thrower for Tinguely's Hommage to New York, 1960, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Robert Rauschenberg, Regilar Diary Glut, 1986, Assembled and riveted painted material, 85 x 116 x 24", Courtesy of PaceWildenstein. |
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Guggenheim Museum Nearly two years after the death of Robert Rauschenberg, May 12, 2008, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao celebrates his with the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts. Comprised of approximately 40 works, this exhibition presents a little known body of Rauschenberg's work in metal drawn from the holdings of the Rauschenberg Estate, with additional loans from institutions and private collections from various countries. Robert Rauschenberg shifted his artistic attention toward the exploration of the visual properties of metal after his experiments in his Combines, in which he combined bi-dimensional painting with sculpture in the late 1950s, the exploration of technologic art in the 1960s, and his emphasis on natural fibers such as paper, cardboard, and fabric in the seventies. In 1986, Rauschenberg began to assemble casted metal objects and to experiment with his own photographic images, printed in aluminum, bronze, brass, or copper. His aim was to capture the reflective, sculptural, thematic, and textural possibilities of the material. The artist continued to work intermittently following this new method until 1995. In November 1998, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao hosted the most comprehensive retrospective to date on this gifted American artist. The show was a highlight of the international exhibition calendar given the quantity and quality of the works displayed, which emphasized the extraordinary beauty of the formats presented in Frank Gehry's recently designed spaces and gave rise to a fascinating language of dialogues and disciplines. Eleven years after that great retrospective, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has now come full circle with Gluts, the last series on which the artist worked before his death.
Robert Rauschenberg, Blue Gate Secret Spring Glut, 1989, Assembled metal and chain, 117.5 x w: 48.9 x d: 16.2 cm. |
Robert Rauschenberg, Cathedral Late Summer Glut, 1987, Assembled metal parts, 50 x 115 x 22", Private Collection. |
