Gallery facade. April 2021.
Exhibition view.
Exhibition view.
Exhibition view.
Nico Munuera. Untitled, 2020.
Exhibition view.
Juan Ugalde. Hoy pasó un avión, 2021.
Exhibition view.
Exhibition view.
Willie Doherty. Small things in isolation, 2021.
Exhibition view. Victoria Civera. Untitled, 2020.
Exhibition view.
Juan Uslé. Fracción de segundo, 2020.
Juan Uslé. Cercas, 2020.
Basurama. RE-flejos, 2020.
Exhibition view.
Antoni Muntadas. Social Distance II, 2020.
Fermín Jimenez Landa. Quiromántico, 2020.
Exhibition view.
Alejandro S. Garrido. Business as usual, 2020-2021.
Exhibition view.
Itziar Okariz. Pi, 2020.
Carlos Irijalba. Wing/foam, 2021.
Exhibition view.
Miren Doiz. Sin título, 2020.
Dennis Adams. Anyway but back, 2020.
Guillermo Mora. Sí pero no, 2020.
Information
ONE HUNDRED BY SEVENTY
Dennis Adams, Basurama, Victoria Civera, Willie Doherty, Miren Doiz, Alejandro S. Garrido, Santiago Giralda, Carlos Irijalba, Fermín Jiménez-Landa, Miralda, Guillermo Mora, Muntadas, Nico Munuera, Itziar Okariz, Tony Oursler, Juan Ugalde, Juan Uslé.
From April 17 to June the 5th, 2021
The alarm rang one hour later than usual. Quiet breakfast, heartbreaking news. Thirty minutes of exercise on a tiled floor in the living room, unfit for that kind of activity. A quick shower and the confinement uniform, comfortable and discreet, for videoconferences. A full day of work sitting on a wooden chair, not at all designed for such purpose. WhatsApp, Teams, emails, video calls, to carry out team meetings. Instagram, Artsy, Viewing room, web, to continue our work of disseminating art. Trying to be productive, trying to keep the interest in art alive. In the meantime, children from all over the world filled their windows with drawings that, once again, reminded us that we should stay at home.
A dystopia that almost was (and still is) a nightmare. The consequences of our actions are now taken to the extreme of the undesirable. For weeks, Kim Sung-su’s film “Virus” remained in Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched movies. Series or books such as The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, which portray fictional societies governed by totalitarian states that seek to ensure social stability through the psychological manipulation of individuals, became very popular. In times of devastating ignorance and nescience as the ones we are living in, we must know the outcome of the worst-case scenario possible. We were not the exception.
One hundred by seventy is neither an exhibition about the pandemic, nor about the confinement lived the past year, but a show that was developed during that period, when all galleries were closed; transportation and commuting were blocked, and working material was non-existent. In such a dystopian situation as this, one can’t help but wonder what would happen if all this were to tear down the traditional art system. If we could not interact with artists, or if they could not produce their work. Faced with daunting futures, we decided to look for answers.
The reality is that our profession has transformed that, for better or worse, cannot be undone. The physical places of encounter, such as galleries, art fairs, and museums, will return to the routine of the previous decade when the sanitary conditions allow it, but digital platforms will remain as a complement to the system. The digitalization of our surroundings has suffered an exponential impulse during the last few months, and from the galleries, we have witnessed the digital globalization of the art market, as we have been forced to dump all of our database content on online sales platforms.
On April 23, 2020, after more than a month of confinement and forced closure of our facilities, we asked our artists: How would we have to interact (artist and gallery owner) if this situation lasted for a long time? We proposed a format, which is the basic model for printing billboards and posters: 100 x 70 cm. The premise: that they would send in return a piece in digital format, which we would send to a photo laboratory or any other production center so that they could return the finished work to us from there. Or that they proposed another type of work in which the artist practically did not intervene, and it was the end customer himself who had to assemble the work. Each artist has chosen the most appropriate support and discipline to show it in this exhibition that opens as a confirmation of the hope, confidence, illusion, and, why not, of the optimism that we place in the future.
Text by Ester Almeda
Galería MPA / Moisés Pérez de Albéniz