MURCIA, SPAIN.- La Conservera will open its third series of exhibitions by Valentin Carron, FOD, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, Eva Rothschild and Gert & Uwe Tobias.
These five artists, for the most part sculptors, share a set of common concerns and interests and are all engaged in redefining, revising, appropriating or deconstructing concepts and forms grounded in the various movements associated with modernism, focusing their work on an exploration of new materials and conventional techniques.
Valentin Carron (Fully, Switzerland-1977)
"Fibre fibre, austère austère".
"Space 1"
Valentin Carron works across sculpture, painting and installation. He reproduces real objects or elements with a symbolicly charged meaning from his own environment as well as from broader cultural contexts.
For his first exhibition in Spain, he is presenting in Space 1 a work called Fibre fibre, austère austère produced by La Conservera. The work comprises twelve elements, each a large wall-like object. These walls look like rough structures in grey plaster though they are actually made of fibre, referencing both painting ant nature. Each one of these works contains a different repeated geometrical element in the form of decorative openings or slots which are covered from behind by meshes of dark brown fibre. These are the kinds of walls of constructions that one can find in rural areas of south and central Europe and used as sheds for drying or storing grain.
Coinciding with this exhibition La Conservera has published the artist's book "Learning from Martigny: Valentin Carron" in conjunction with JRP-Ringier.
FOD (Francisco Olivares Díaz. Puerto Lumbreras, Spain-1973)
Espacio disponible.
Courtyard
The importance of the architectural aesthetic in cities is an ongoing concern in FOD's work. His apparently formal art contains a narrative component, underpinned by a desire to exercise the memory of the cities he inhabits. The artist has often posited a geometric scheme of reality, translating it to a painterly and sculptural language directly linked to constructivism, both formally as well as conceptually.
The Courtyard hosts a large sculpture produced by La Conservera made with material proper to construction. The work sets in place a dialogue with the very architecture of the art center in order to create an Espacio disponible, an inhabitable and "Available Space" inside another.
La Conservera and Espacio AV have published a catalogue for this exhibition with essays by Christian Viveros Fauné and Javier Díaz Guardiola.
Manu Muniategiandikoetxea (Bergara, Spain-1966)
"Night Flight"
"Space 3"
The formalisation of space through constructive riffs and an exploration of their perceptive potential are still the core concern in a body of work that is recurrent in motifs, yet without exhausting itself in its own repertoire, thus consolidating a coherent continuum.
At "Space 3" in La Conservera he has produced a sculpture of enormous proportions which, invades the whole space and projects reflections of itself onto the perimeter of the hall. "Night Flight", as this exhibition is titled, consists of a large-scale enlargement of a sculpture by Alexander Rodchenko and the formation of a decorative pattern with the remains of the material used to construct it. This is not a Rodchenkian form, in terms of a derived style, but a free recreation of the Russian artist starting from direct appropriation.
La Conservera has published a catalogue for this exhibition with essays by Miguel Ángel Hernández-Navarro and Peio Aguirre.
Eva Rothschild (Dublin, Ireland-1971)
Space 4
Eva Rothschild's sculptures derive from the abstraction of different visual codes and imagery. She explores the highly wrought relationship between objective form and new-age spiritualism. Rothschild approaches art as tantamount to a numinous belief system, where functionless objects become receptacles for immaterial sentiment, both inciting and emitting their own metaphysical auras.
For the first time in Spain, various bodies of work belonging to private European collections can be seen in Space 4 at La Conservera. At the centre of the hall are various pieces showcasing the different materials and features of the artist's work, as well as a new sculpture produced expressly for La Conservera. At the back of the hall is a series of sculptures on metallic plinths, arranged in the form of people in conversation. The upper level houses the large sculpture called Supernature.
La Conservera has published a catalogue for the exhibition with an essay by Amanda Cuesta.
Gert & Uwe Tobias (Kronstadt, Rumania-1973)
"Space 2"
The Romanian twin brothers Gert & Uwe Tobias, create large scale woodcuts and sculptural construction, as well as typewriter drawings, watercolours, ceramic sculptures and wood constructions.
For their first solo show in Spain, they are presenting three woodcuts in the two rooms in "Space 2". The first will host, for the very first time, the whole series of posters made expressly for their exhibitions in galleries and art centres. In this exhibition the woodcuts are presented with friezes around the frames, extending down to the ground. This form of presentation gives each work a sculptural effect, in turn influencing the perception of the specific symmetric elements of the hall. The poster for La Conservera is exhibited at the centre of the space on a steel structure. A series of new woodcuts is presented in the second room in "Space 2". All these works belong to private European collections.
