Fundación Helga de Alvear » Exhibitions

Approaches I. Contemporary Spanish Art in Helga de Alvear Collection

admin — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:52:53 +0000

Approaches I is the first of a new series of exhibitions which aim to explore the Helga de Alvear Foundation Collection’s commitment and engagement with Spanish contemporary art from a variety of different perspectives. This first “approach”, curated by Rafael Doctor, features works from 1975-2011.
In this exhibition visitors can appreciate the rich range of arguments and approaches employed by Spanish art in recent years and how these has been reflected in the specific personality of this collection, undoubtedly one of the most singular and important collections ever created in Spain.
As visitors walk through the rooms of the Centre they will come across a number of different conceptual sections, invariably open to interpretation, into which various artists –the crucial pillars for understanding the nature of art made in Spain in recent times– have been placed separately.
The exhibition starts off in a peculiar airport waiting room made by Ester Partegàs which raises a host of questions and ideas about collecting and officialdom, and about the sensual and poetic aspects of perception. These questions and ideas also pervade a large room nearby devoted to works discussing the complexity of nature in many different ways. On floor -2 is set aside for Pop art painting and for the two principal styles of this genre to be found in Spain. On display on floor -1 are various conceptual approaches that highlight a critical analysis of Spanish society and history. Lastly, in two large rooms on floor 1 works of art based on a wide range of pictorial approaches are contrasted with sculptural pieces conceived with different conceptual and formal notions.
Amongst these works, a few other pieces have been interspersed transversally across the exhibition layout. Accordingly, a visit to this exhibition is an open-ended adventure to be read and interpreted differently by each visitor, who are encouraged to be the real actors in this complex, fascinating and absolutely thriving story about Spanish contemporary art.

Margins of Silence

roberto — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:16:23 +0000

The body of works on display in the exhibition presented here have been chosen because they illustrate, in a wide-ranging and approximate way, some of the concepts related to silence, and to the trail of changes these ideas have had on the attitudes of artists since the sixties last century.

The “margins of silence” symbolically encloses, therefore, the permeability of a specific place. A permeability that must flow in order to enable the dialogue with these works to attain the required level of intensity in each particular case.

On display in this exhibition are works by many artists that form part of the history of art and have signposted some of the most frequented routes in its development over the past five decades.

Also on display are works by younger artists who have been very active, though not in the mainstream, in creating their own unclassifiable languages.

The first exhibition to be held at the Centro de Artes Visuales de Cáceres endeavours to convey the range of crucial moments for the development of recent art encompassed by the Collection and the singularity of the works of art, ideas, methods and techniques that converge in it to build its appeal.

In addition, the current selection faithfully reflects the evolution of Helga de Alvear’s artistic concerns and the affinities she has developed as her experience has grown in a field where one needs to be receptive and constantly alert.

In this show the works on display are going to converse with the space and also with each other in a three-part interplay, thus allowing the artistic experience to achieve its full expressive potential.

Stories of Material Life

roberto — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:28:13 +0000

The Helga de Alvear Collection is the result of acquisitions made over the past forty years which not only configure a map of the collector’s concerns and interests but also possess, in the great breadth of her choices, an enormous potential for understanding recent developments in art.

Beyond her activity as a gallery owner, Helga de Alvear has been able to distinguish the field of activity from her collection, understanding it, as she repeatedly states, as a process of learning and passion. In the simplicity of this duality, however, a two-fold motivation is clearly expressed that lies between emotion and knowledge, which are the twin poles of the relationship with art from which we all mark out our connection with the artistic field.

The exhibition that is currently being announced is entitled Histórias da vida material.

It is a presentation of works that, in various forms and on various artistic supports, configure the relationship that the artists in the exhibition establish with the materiality of quotidian experience. The works refer at times to the body (sometimes the artist’s own body, as self-representation), at times to the physicality of the space, and at other times to the political and productive relations that constitute our communal ways of life.

One of the central aspects of the exhibition, perhaps its starting point, is the presentation of a very significant series of works by the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1945 – 1978). The series is composed of photographs and drawings that map the exhibition and point out the various directions along which it develops.

Throughout the exhibition, the works relate to each other via axes of connection that highlight the diverse ways of representing and fictionalising the world, maintaining a constant feeling of disquiet and analysis arising from the confrontation between what is familiar to us (the house, the library, the media, the body, desire, economic and productive relations etc) and the subtle deviation and defamiliarisation that the artists use in their processes of representation.

Curated by Delfim Sardo, the exhibition is the subject of a catalogue that contains extensive documentation on the works on display and an essay by the curator.