CONTEMPORARY SPANISH SCULPTURE 2000-2010

September 30, 2009 – February 21, 2010

Since the paradigm shift undergone by classical statuary in the nineteenth century, sculpture has become involved in all the “isms” of the avant-garde, reinventing itself as one of the most innovative, radical and fertile areas within the visual arts. Minimalism brought sculpture down from the pedestal onto the floor, proposing a different way of perceiving and experiencing space, form and material. In her famous 1979 essay “Sculpture in the expanded field”, Rosalind E. Krauss set out the coordinates for the new sculpture of the sixties and seventies. A shift in interest had taken place, away from the ornamental baggage of form, and, idealistically, towards a space that sought an experimental interaction with the viewer.

Into this new sculpture scene flow languages from various fields of art – photography, video, ephemeral art, installations or performances. New technologies have been incorporated, from architecture and bordering even on engineering, producing the creative space which best shows the transversal nature of the visual arts in our time. Although the traditional division of arts has now almost disappeared, sculpture stands apart due to its will to explore three-dimensional space, subject to the dialectical tension set up between the object and its absence, whether in true or virtual reality. In this way, sculpture has been at the fore of one of the most fruitful periods of international contemporary art.
Since the mid-1980s, Spanish art has seen a new blooming of sculpture in tune with what has been happening in other parts of the world, a tendency which has developed and become more marked over time. This exhibition aims to contribute to the debate about Spanish sculpture today, and thereby about art in general, through the works of fourteen artists of very different generations, proposals and lines of development. It does not aim to map out a canonical area or to set criteria for what is representative on statistical or hierarchical grounds, but rather to show the variety of poetics that coexist – whether converging or diverging – on the Spanish art scene. And in order to ensure that this convergence appears more “dramatic”, as the exhibition curator Francisco Calvo Serraller puts it, the chronological range of the works has been limited to those produced during the first ten years of this millennium, from 2000 to 2010.
The distribution of the works in the exhibition rooms, apart from questions of space, is aimed at creating dialogue between the individual poetics of the different artists (each one of great international renown), thereby revealing the wide-open nature of the visual arts scene in Spain, rooted both in the historic avant-garde and in the artistic tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s.
The existentialist style of realism in the work of Antonio López (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936) is set against the reflection on sculpture made by Juan Navarro Baldeweg (Santander, 1939), working with light, volume and empty space in a series of differently formatted heads. The sculpture of Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, 1955), is a place for thinking about the human condition, where poetry and form come together. The complex and dynamic structures of Blanca Muñoz (Madrid, 1963) lead us to look out towards the cosmos. The distinctive imagery of Francisco Leiro (Cambados, Pontevedra, 1957) is rooted in the mythological and ancestral.
Mediterranean sensuality overflows in the “pictorial” materiality of the ceramics by Miquel Barceló (Felanitx, Mallorca, 1957). There is a constructive rigour in the works of Susana Solano (Barcelona, 1946), with their reflection on space and the traces of memory. Elena del Rivero (Valencia, 1949), reveals the transcendent profile of simple things, exploring a close and domestic world. Naia del Castillo (Bilbao, 1975) examines in her work the politics of gender, using strategies of amorous seduction and stereotypes of everyday life. Pello Irazu (Andoain, Guipúzcoa, 1963) develops a sculptural syntax with the relation between two and three-dimensionality, seeking a spatial experience of time. Desire, death and the fleeting nature of life are recurrent themes in the work of Javier Pérez (Bilbao, 1968), developed with great conceptual and formal delicacy. Eva Lootz (Vienna, Austria, 1940) concentrates on the poetics of materials and forms in a work of allegorical content. Cristina Iglesias (San Sebastián, 1956) creates spaces of perception that are ambiguous, fragile, labyrinthine and transparent, and which confront ideas such as safety, threat, shelter or disorientation. Sergio Prego (Fuenterrabía, San Sebastián, 1969) uses various technological and constructive means in reconsidering our relation with time and space.

Sponsored by Excma. Diputación Provincial de Segovia y Caja Madrid. Obra Social.