The opening of ARCO
The Prince and Princess of Asturias officially opened the 33rd edtition of ARCO, and to be honest they didn´t look too interested in the work exhibited, and when they did walk into a booth they didn´t seem very animated with what they saw. However like most people who visited ARCO I felt completely overwhelmed with the quantity, quality and variety of the work exhibited. It was generally a very serious environment with art galleries desperate for sales rather than chit-chat, so I really enjoyed finding artists or gallery owners who were welcome to questions and dialogue.
Focus on Finland
Contemporary art from Finland was the focus of this years ARCO and I was very impressed with the environmental comment of the work displayed, which in the case of the artwork by Anna Rokka represented by Sinne, overflowed out of the exhibition space.
The artist Antti Laitiene was represented by Galerie Anhava, with an inspiring work entitled ´forest square´, in which a 10 m square area of forest was cut down and classified systematically into a floor based sculpture. A video and photographs accompanied the work and clearly illustrated the process through which the project was realised in a huge warehouse, with a high pressure water jet and many metal drawers to store the materials. The work is described as being based on performance and conceptually to test physical and psychological boundaries.
Another artist who captured my interest both through her work and from an insightful discussion with the artist in person Elina Brotherus, represented by the Ama Gallery. She exhibited a series of photographs entitled 12 years later, which explored the difference in her perception of a landscape and of a place, as a dialogue between the self-portraits of a young artist re-explored by a middle-aged artist, as a visualisation of the passage of time. In 1999 she was enivited to Chalon-su-Saone in France, where she learnt about the French culture and language often through utilizing post-it notes. When she returned in 2011 as a teacher, she stayed in the same room at the same place, but the post-it notes were much more detailed, with ideas and concepts rather than simple words describing the furniture in the room. By re-exploring visually many of the same landscapes and places, it resulted in a very intriguing exhibition.
Carlos Iridjalba
The Moisés Pérez de Albéniz Gallery exhibited the work of Carlos Iridjalba. His artwork entitled ´Paused Sequence´was exhibited in an aluminium support, and consisted of samples from geotechnical surveys. Two others were photographs entitled ´File Strata´ which referenced contemporary geology on a human scale.
The Juan Silio Gallery also had some impressive photographs by the same artist, which put in juxtaposition a human landscape and an ancient geological strata.
