Spanish Artists to look out for at The Venice Biennale 2022
Image Credit: Adrián Malagamba
The 59th edition of the Venice Biennale opened last week after a two-year hiatus. Running since 1895 it is the oldest international exhibition of its kind and is often referred to as the "olympics of the art world".
Ever-evolving, the long anticipated Biennale 2022 features a show-stopping central exhibition “THE MILK OF DREAMS” at the Arsenale, curated by Cecilia Alemani (current Director and Chief Curator of High Line Art in New York) and with an implicit focus on female surrealism. “As the first Italian woman to hold this position, I intend to give voice to artists to create unique projects that reflect their visions and our society”, she has declared. For the first time in 127 years, the arsenale show includes a majority of women and gender non-conforming artists.
This year's event is shaping up to be one of the best ever, featuring 213 artists from 58 countries with more Spanish representation than we've seen in many editions.
Here are some of the most exciting Spanish and Catalan artists to look out for...
the Spanish Pavilion: Correction by Ignasi Aballi
Image Credit: Claudio Franzini
“Correction”, this year’s project for the Spanish Pavilion curated by Bea Espejo involved shifting the building off its axis. While studying the floor plans, artist Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) discovered that the building, set in a corner of the Giardini, was off-kilter. He then went on to design an intervention, building new internal walls at a 10 degree angle to disrupt spatial memory and modify the exhibition space.
“The entire project is a meta-exhibition and at once a dematerialization. It is like an oblique and concealed institutional critique. Like a broken image of Venice. A disjointed idea of Spain” - Bea Espejo, Curator
Alongside the shifting of the pavilion, the artist published six books about Venice, aiming to “correct” what we would typically expect from a tourist guide to the city.
“Aballí identifies another apparent error in relation to the city: Venice is one of the cities that attracts the most visitors in the world and, in turn, it faces serious problems due to mass tourism, pushing it to the brink of collapse. This contradiction drives the artist to view it in a slowed down manner and through the lens of his own artistic practice.”
Image Credit: Instagram of Pedro Torres
Assistant to Ignasi Aballí, Pedro Torres also has a solo show in Venice at aarduork. Running until the 15th May, on the Brink of Blindness is an installation that entangles light, sound, space and matter in the visual and corporal perception of the viewer.
“Llim” by Lara Fluxà
Rising star Lara Fluxà is a Mallorcan artist based in Barcelona, representing Catalunya at the Biennale as part of the Eventi Collaterali program, curated by Oriol Fontdevilla and produced by the Institut Ramon Llull. She trained at the University of Barcelona's Faculty of Fine Arts, has been through Fundació Joan Miró's Espai 13, the Sala d'Art Jove of the Secretariat of Youth and received a research and innovation grant from the Department of Culture
'Llim' (or Silt in English) is an installation consisting of tanks and glass pipes, especially commissioned for the Catalan pavilion. Representing an “international leap” for the artist, the installation "places water and glass at the forefront, as elements inherent to the history of Venice, to create an organism indicative of a plethora of concepts." - Oriol Fontdevilla.
Spanish Artists in The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the Arsenale
The Milk of Dreams takes its title from a book by Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) – Cecilia Alemani stated – in which the Surrealist artist describes a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, become something or someone else.
Sandra Vasquez de la Horra
Represented by our good friends Senda Gallery Sandra Vasquez de la Horra ‘s etherial otherworldly works tie in with the exhibition theme perfectly.
Detail from "Saludo a Olorun" (Greeting the sun) on view at the 59th Biennale di Venezia
This reel by Senda Gallery showcases the artist’s installation at La Biennale Arte Venezia 2022. Vásquez de la Horra’s custom-built wooden structure is filled with her drawings, including folded objects featuring bodies that double as mountain ranges, evoking the natural world.
June Crespo
Am I an Object (Part III) 2021 at P////AKT. Photo: Charlott Markus, courtesy P////AKT Amsterdam.
“June Crespo makes sculptures from industrial materials that reference architectural and bodily forms…. Each of Crespo’s sculptures suggests a body entrenched within an architectural space.
Crespo’s new series of sculptures for The Milk of Dreams is an evolution of HELMETS (2020), two pairs of cast aluminium torsos stacked on top of each other, with the spouts through which the liquid metal is poured into the mould still attached, as well as a group of cast-concrete statues that expose the relief cast of shipping barrels.” - Melanie Kress
teresa solar
Image Credit: Artist’s Instagram
Another Spanish talents participating in The Milk of Dreams is Madrid-based Teresa Solar, represented by Joan Prats.
“The artist’s new series Tunnel Boring Machine (2022), comprises three large sculptures inspired by animals and prehistoric life forms reminiscent of fish gills, dolphin fins, beaks, blades, and oars. Treated with a high polish finish, these works speak to a conception of abstracted time: they are inventions of fiction and simulation, compositions of a long hidden earthly skin.” - Madeline Weisburg
We have recently introduced Teresa Solar to several of our clients, offering some of her sculptures and drawings for their home collections. We predict even bigger things in the artist’s future!
Are you heading to Venice for the Biennale?
Running until November, there’s plenty of time to make up for lost time and experience what many art critics are referring to as one of the strongest Biennales in recent years. Alongside the main exhibition at the Arsenale and the national pavilions , there are 30 official collateral events which are also unmissable!
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