David Martínez Suárez
Menos Da Una Piedra
10 May - 03 Jul 2016
DAVID MARTÍNEZ SUÁREZ
Menos Da Una Piedra
10 May - 3 July 2016
The intervention carried out in the Sala Rekalde under the title Menos da una piedra is part of a work de work initially funded by the Regional Council of Bizkaia and, later, by the Basque Government project Eremuak.
David Martínez Suárez (La Hueria, Asturias, 1984) graduated in Fine Arts through the University of the Basque Country, where he also obtained a Master’s degree.
He has received various scholarships and awards: particularly worthy of mention are the Basque Government’s programme Eremuak (2015), and the LabJoven Experimenta grant from the LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre, Gijon (2012). Together with the artists Lorea Alfaro, Manu Uranga and Jon Otamendi he was awarded the Basque Government Diffusion Grant for a project denominated MLDJ (2010-2011). He has also been engaged in residencies in different institutions including Fundación Bilbaoarte and Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2008).
Among his shows are Punto de origen, Museo Barjola, Gijon; Hall, Galería Carreras Múgica, Bilbao, (2016). Hiperobjetos, COAM, Madrid; No better, no worse, no change, no pain. Galería Gema Llamazares, Gijon; Si la montaña no va, espacio Think, Asturias; Diagonal, Torre de Ariz, Basauri, (2014). Inercia, Laboral Centro de Arte, Gijon; Izena Gero, Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao (2013). Defensa, in the Valey Centro Cultural, Asturias, (2012). Respira hondo, Fundación María Forcada, Navarra (2011). The back room, Galería Pilar Parra & Romero, Madrid (2009). Zwei Monate in Einem. c.art Prantl & Boch Galerie, Bregenz, Austria; and Entornos Próximos. Museo Artium, Vitoria, (2008).
His video work has been exhibited in audio-visual showings such as the projection of the documentary Nalón, during the “Day of Architecture”, Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) at FLACC, Genk, Belgium in 2007.
Menos da una piedra is an expression employed quite frequently in daily language, the meaning of which points to things that lie beyond what is transmitted. Some sort of resignation about performing a task in which, although the profit from it is scarce, it is preferable to settle for what there is.
In 1797 diamonds were discovered to be carbon in its pure state. This led to a process of modern alchemy when on 16 December 1954 Howard Tracy Hall managed to produce synthetic diamonds and to be capable of replicating the process. My understanding is that, from then onwards, the above expression acquired a new meaning.
When I look at many performances or installations from the 1960s and 70s, I sense that they were produced with the final purpose of creating a black and white image, as in the case of Beuys in the Rene Block Gallery or of Vito Acconci in the Sonnabend Gallery in NY. In Punto de origen I started out from the image of Caja Vacía, [Empty Box], by Oteiza, photographed at his house in Irun against the landscape. That picture always struck me as very powerful, and more so when I found another in which the artist himself appeared, photographing the box with a medium format camera through the glass. They are both direct, as working snapshots in the studio, but at the same time they contain a potential that I can’t just reduce to a matter of fetishism or of nostalgia for the analogue world. I understand these two images, almost of a cinematographic shot-reverse shot, as part of space, as something that occurs.
In the set of operations that make up the project Punto de origen, which the installation Menos da una piedra presented in the Sala Rekalde forms a part, the objects seem to whisper otherworldly testimonies between the familiar and the odd, the disappearance of half-artisan half-industrial ways of doing and of social relation, the last link we had with the pre-modern world.
Alfred Jarry described the bicycle as a Christian device of martyrdom and suffering. He travelled round Paris riding his Clement Luxe 96 road bike, above all so as to live and not think, and from it he himself maintained that the visual impressions succeeded one another so fast that all he was able to retain was the resulting sensación.
Menos Da Una Piedra
10 May - 3 July 2016
The intervention carried out in the Sala Rekalde under the title Menos da una piedra is part of a work de work initially funded by the Regional Council of Bizkaia and, later, by the Basque Government project Eremuak.
David Martínez Suárez (La Hueria, Asturias, 1984) graduated in Fine Arts through the University of the Basque Country, where he also obtained a Master’s degree.
He has received various scholarships and awards: particularly worthy of mention are the Basque Government’s programme Eremuak (2015), and the LabJoven Experimenta grant from the LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre, Gijon (2012). Together with the artists Lorea Alfaro, Manu Uranga and Jon Otamendi he was awarded the Basque Government Diffusion Grant for a project denominated MLDJ (2010-2011). He has also been engaged in residencies in different institutions including Fundación Bilbaoarte and Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2008).
Among his shows are Punto de origen, Museo Barjola, Gijon; Hall, Galería Carreras Múgica, Bilbao, (2016). Hiperobjetos, COAM, Madrid; No better, no worse, no change, no pain. Galería Gema Llamazares, Gijon; Si la montaña no va, espacio Think, Asturias; Diagonal, Torre de Ariz, Basauri, (2014). Inercia, Laboral Centro de Arte, Gijon; Izena Gero, Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao (2013). Defensa, in the Valey Centro Cultural, Asturias, (2012). Respira hondo, Fundación María Forcada, Navarra (2011). The back room, Galería Pilar Parra & Romero, Madrid (2009). Zwei Monate in Einem. c.art Prantl & Boch Galerie, Bregenz, Austria; and Entornos Próximos. Museo Artium, Vitoria, (2008).
His video work has been exhibited in audio-visual showings such as the projection of the documentary Nalón, during the “Day of Architecture”, Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) at FLACC, Genk, Belgium in 2007.
Menos da una piedra is an expression employed quite frequently in daily language, the meaning of which points to things that lie beyond what is transmitted. Some sort of resignation about performing a task in which, although the profit from it is scarce, it is preferable to settle for what there is.
In 1797 diamonds were discovered to be carbon in its pure state. This led to a process of modern alchemy when on 16 December 1954 Howard Tracy Hall managed to produce synthetic diamonds and to be capable of replicating the process. My understanding is that, from then onwards, the above expression acquired a new meaning.
When I look at many performances or installations from the 1960s and 70s, I sense that they were produced with the final purpose of creating a black and white image, as in the case of Beuys in the Rene Block Gallery or of Vito Acconci in the Sonnabend Gallery in NY. In Punto de origen I started out from the image of Caja Vacía, [Empty Box], by Oteiza, photographed at his house in Irun against the landscape. That picture always struck me as very powerful, and more so when I found another in which the artist himself appeared, photographing the box with a medium format camera through the glass. They are both direct, as working snapshots in the studio, but at the same time they contain a potential that I can’t just reduce to a matter of fetishism or of nostalgia for the analogue world. I understand these two images, almost of a cinematographic shot-reverse shot, as part of space, as something that occurs.
In the set of operations that make up the project Punto de origen, which the installation Menos da una piedra presented in the Sala Rekalde forms a part, the objects seem to whisper otherworldly testimonies between the familiar and the odd, the disappearance of half-artisan half-industrial ways of doing and of social relation, the last link we had with the pre-modern world.
Alfred Jarry described the bicycle as a Christian device of martyrdom and suffering. He travelled round Paris riding his Clement Luxe 96 road bike, above all so as to live and not think, and from it he himself maintained that the visual impressions succeeded one another so fast that all he was able to retain was the resulting sensación.