Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan
08 Feb - 15 Apr 2007
DOLORES ZINNY AND JUAN MAIDAGAN
"The coast, the attack, the same"
February 08th - April 15th, 2007
Under the title The coast, the attack, the same, Argentine artists Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan, both of whom live in Berlin, present a new installation, made specifically for sala rekalde, comprising a series of works that establish reciprocal play between design, painting, sculpture and architecture. The exhibition's point of departure is a sculptural construction entitled Alarga la lengua (Stretch your tongue out), which unfurls within the exhibition space to reveal two series of basic, interwoven materials (wood and polyester). Accompanying this intervention is a set of complementary works, including some drawings inspired by the same piece, a series of collages and small sculptures, and a large-format fabric piece, made in 2005, and readapted for this show.
This collection shows the work processes developed by the artists whilst the installation was being conceived. So, for instance, there is the formal translation of the design of an initial model, executed in cardboard and paper, towards its consequent architectural construction within the gallery space; or the repetition of a geometric shape, in this case an ellipse, until it consolidates as a differentiated aesthetic signifier. These processes of transition or of translation from one format to another, from one language to another, constitute one of the original ideas that triggered the exhibition. In fact, the central piece functions metaphorically as an image for that movement: the figure of two currents that extend to meet each other in a mutual encounter that results in them colliding without interruption.
The work of Zinny Maidagan is remarkable for the architectural interventions it involves. Some of these develop along lines of a post-post-minimalist formalism (in that they are established as discrete architectural alterations that announce a new experience which is finally frustrated), whilst others reproduce prototypes, previously designed in small model format, on an architectural scale, recreating subjective scenarios from which a place for fiction becomes active within the exhibition space. But beyond the merely physical, in each of their installations one can discover a conceptual dimension, where various levels of lyricism are used to produce narratives capable of defying all conventionality in their interpretation of a space, an institution or a system of values. Their spatial explorations mix fiction with the specificity of the space, the fantastic with the metaphysical, and introduce a literary element, always with the aim of sparking off reactions that depart from orthodox institutional criticism.
The intervention in sala rekalde likewise plays on the multiplicity of interpretations available. One title, for instance, directly suggests that you now 'stick out your tongue': urging you to stretch it to its full length, as the doctor might suggest when you go for an examination; and it invites you somehow to follow the instruction and pull a face at the same time. But the singularity of the installation also lies in the dialectical movement of two sequences of materials, whose impulsive form is proposed as a metaphor for the movement of language a language that, swept by the force of History, stretches out towards another and ends up in deadlock with it. And it is precisely at the limits of this logjam where we rediscover another constant in the artistic practice of Dolores Zinny Juan Maidagan: the manifestation of permanent phenomenological fracture that takes place vis the work of art, or the unfulfilled promise of an absolute experience.
"The coast, the attack, the same"
February 08th - April 15th, 2007
Under the title The coast, the attack, the same, Argentine artists Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan, both of whom live in Berlin, present a new installation, made specifically for sala rekalde, comprising a series of works that establish reciprocal play between design, painting, sculpture and architecture. The exhibition's point of departure is a sculptural construction entitled Alarga la lengua (Stretch your tongue out), which unfurls within the exhibition space to reveal two series of basic, interwoven materials (wood and polyester). Accompanying this intervention is a set of complementary works, including some drawings inspired by the same piece, a series of collages and small sculptures, and a large-format fabric piece, made in 2005, and readapted for this show.
This collection shows the work processes developed by the artists whilst the installation was being conceived. So, for instance, there is the formal translation of the design of an initial model, executed in cardboard and paper, towards its consequent architectural construction within the gallery space; or the repetition of a geometric shape, in this case an ellipse, until it consolidates as a differentiated aesthetic signifier. These processes of transition or of translation from one format to another, from one language to another, constitute one of the original ideas that triggered the exhibition. In fact, the central piece functions metaphorically as an image for that movement: the figure of two currents that extend to meet each other in a mutual encounter that results in them colliding without interruption.
The work of Zinny Maidagan is remarkable for the architectural interventions it involves. Some of these develop along lines of a post-post-minimalist formalism (in that they are established as discrete architectural alterations that announce a new experience which is finally frustrated), whilst others reproduce prototypes, previously designed in small model format, on an architectural scale, recreating subjective scenarios from which a place for fiction becomes active within the exhibition space. But beyond the merely physical, in each of their installations one can discover a conceptual dimension, where various levels of lyricism are used to produce narratives capable of defying all conventionality in their interpretation of a space, an institution or a system of values. Their spatial explorations mix fiction with the specificity of the space, the fantastic with the metaphysical, and introduce a literary element, always with the aim of sparking off reactions that depart from orthodox institutional criticism.
The intervention in sala rekalde likewise plays on the multiplicity of interpretations available. One title, for instance, directly suggests that you now 'stick out your tongue': urging you to stretch it to its full length, as the doctor might suggest when you go for an examination; and it invites you somehow to follow the instruction and pull a face at the same time. But the singularity of the installation also lies in the dialectical movement of two sequences of materials, whose impulsive form is proposed as a metaphor for the movement of language a language that, swept by the force of History, stretches out towards another and ends up in deadlock with it. And it is precisely at the limits of this logjam where we rediscover another constant in the artistic practice of Dolores Zinny Juan Maidagan: the manifestation of permanent phenomenological fracture that takes place vis the work of art, or the unfulfilled promise of an absolute experience.