2000-2001 Season
25th Anniversary Cycle
Curators: Mònica Regàs, Ferran Barenblit and Frederic Montornés
The joint curatorship by these three art critics is partly a consequence of the history of the Espai 13. All three of them have, along with others, configured what is known today as the Espai 13. Created as the Espai 10 shortly after the Foundation opened, it is now consolidated as a room that is not so much a physical space as a concept: a commitment to put on exhibitions by artists forging new paths in contemporary art.
In this cycle commemorating the Foundation’s 25th anniversary, selected jointly by three former Espai 13 curators, the Foundation offers a reflection on both the past and the future of this space.
To start with, the artists are not restricted to the physical dimensions of the room but can spread to other parts of the building and even outside into the city. The artists who have been selected this season are Carles Congost, Nicola Costantino, Santiago Mayo, Erwin Wurm, Joseph Grigely, João Louro, Douglas Gordon, Claude Lévéque and Michel François.
All of them are currently exhibiting frequently in art centres around the world, all have reached interesting stages in their careers, and all present proposals closely linked to the spirit of the Espai 13. In some cases these are new works produced specifically for the Foundation, and in others it will be their first solo exhibition in Spain, with the Foundation thus offering them a chance to come in contact with the local public. From a formal point of view, the works embrace painting, installations, sculpture and video as well as more conceptual items.
Country Girls is a fictitious story of three teenagers told and performed in such a way that it can be transported and adapted to any space. In it, Carles Congost uses colouring and a deliberately adolescent register in order to present with a touch of irony this narrative that conceals an element of tragedy beneath an appearance of happiness.
Nicola Costantino (Rosario, Argentina, 1964) graduated in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Humanities and Arts in Rosario, specialising in sculpture. She now lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Santiago Mayo, born in Tal (La Coruña) in 1965, has had solo exhibitions in several Spanish galleries and institutions, including the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela and the Galería Magda Belloti in Madrid.
After a decade working with João Tabarra in Entertainment & Co., Louro has gone back to his own individual work.In La pensée et l’erreur, which will be shown in the Espai 13 at the FJM, he plays with a language that is very familiar to us — road and motorway signs.
Douglas Gordon, born in Glasgow in 1960, usually works with film based on the sectioning of fragmented shots. In this exhibition in the Espai 13, he will be showing a 1998 video (Off Screen) in which the image of a curtain is projected on to a screen that is in itself a curtain, and a sound installation consisting of a telephone that reproduces only parts of a conversation.
Joseph Grigely, who lost his hearing as a child as a result of an accident and later studied at Oxford University, uses his conversations and notes written on scraps of paper as the raw material for his work, in which he deals very subtly with the subject of communication.
Claude Lévêque (Nevers, France, 1953) is one of the most radical artists around today. He has been working for twenty years with intangible elements such as light and sound, using them to create spaces in which the tension shows the violence of our society, produced by the collision between the individual and his or her social environment.
Michel François (Saint-Trond, Belgium, 1956) lives and works in Brussels. His art traces with irony and tenderness the many incongruent aspects of our everyday lives.
