The value of humble materials, the waste that consumer society rejects, and how these are used by artists to create works that criticize it. This is the nexus of the new exhibition proposal of the Fundació Tàpies, which until March 5 hosts the exhibitions Light of darkness , by Bruce Conner, organized jointly with the Museu Tinguely in Basel , and The fertilizer that fertilizes the earth (1958-1988), by Antoni Tapies. Two artists very far apart stylistically but who shared the same sensitivity and critical view of contemporary society.
By the legendary North American artist Bruce Conner (1933-2008), considered the father of the video clip and "artist's artist" who experimented with film material, as defined by the curator Roland Wetzel, nine films are shown, among which Crossroads (1976), about the tests prior to the launch of the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Bikini Atoll in 1946. You can also watch A movie film that he made with a budget of three dollars from material taken from newsreels and B movies, or Report , about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in which he criticizes the voyeurism of the public. For Wetzel, behind his work there is a desire to alter the social order so that the viewer reflects on the processing of images and draws their own conclusions about how the media alter our perceptions.
Parallel to this exhibition, Tàpies has brought together thirty works by Antoni Tàpies, carried out between 1958-1988 and some rarely seen, in which he used humble materials such as straw, wood, clothes or scrap metal, of which he wanted to highlight their value. The artist thought that materials actually represent ideas and tried to make the raw materials he used focus images critical of the society around him. "I have presented more realistic works than artists who consider themselves realistic," she said. He suggests a certain superficiality from the figure of the door or the window, very Tapian images, to vindicate his rebellion from art, where "he did not finish his works, those who did were those who received them", according to Homs.
The exhibition offer of the Fundació Tàpies for this autumn is completed with the experimental documentary A State in a State by the young artist and filmmaker Tekla Aslanishvili, originally from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. In the piece, she represents the political borders that have re-emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union from various clips of processes and fragmentations of the railway tracks of the Caspian and South Caucasus regions.
Thanks to this scenario, it is discovered that these iron connections between places and people can be used "as a weapon of exclusion and geopolitical sabotage," says the author. In the same way, Tekla not only criticizes geopolitical aspects, but also social and economic ones, for which she invites the viewer to reflect: “Money destroys, people are confused because of bad political management and these situations must end. I worry about the future”, she concludes..
