Untitled (Valla Zanja), 2013. Courtesy of the artist, GalerÃa Elba BenÃtez (Madrid) and GalerÃa Continua (San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins). Photo by Oak Taylor Smith
The Botín Foundation will host, from the 29 of October until the 1 March 2015, the Orden Aparente (Poético-Político) [Apparent Order (Poetical-Political)] exhibition by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa (Havana, 1967) who will return to Santander (Spain) this year after directing the International Workshop at the Villa Iris which was attended by 15 young artists. Curated by Vicente Todolí, President of the Foundation's Visual Arts Advisory Committee, the exhibition explores the recent output (2009-2014) of one of the most original and acclaimed artists to have been born after the Cuban Revolution in the decade of the sixties.Nearly 35 works, made in a range of media -including installation, video, photography, sculpture, pop-up books and drawings- allow the visitor to view close-up the artistic imaginary and critical discourse of this artist who is internationally acclaimed for an oeuvre in which the city lies beneath as a representation of individual and collective memory. As is customary in this undertaking, the Botín Foundation will purchase one of the works on display in the exhibition for its Collection.
The exhibition features some of the artist's most representative pieces produced in the last decade including a collection of works which reveal a strikingly individual language when it comes to broaching loaded political subjects such as Las Joyas de la Corona [The Crown Jewels, 2009] or other more poetic approaches such as Jardín [Garden] from the suite called La ciudad vista desde la mesa de casa [The City Seen from the Table at Home, 1998] and Porque toda ciudad tiene derecho a llamarse Utopía [Because Every City Has the Right to be Called Utopia, 2001]. Additionally, the exhibition displays some of the artist's latest creations such as Escala 1:1 [Scale 1:1, 2014], from the suite called Edificios parlantes, [Talking Buildings, 2011] and his new suite of drawings called Infames casas ocultas [Infamous Hidden Houses, 2014], among others.
On display, alongside these works, will be a piece designed specifically for the exhibition at the Botín Foundation in Santander: Proyecto Frágil (Santander) [Fragile Project (Santander), 2014], which recreates a large port city with its geography, ships and cranes using thin sheets of glass held together by magnets. This type of piece, which the artist has been developing since 2010, reflects the fragility of the city and of certain areas exploited for their economic or political potential. Garaicoa made a similar project for Cockatoo Island for the Biennale of Sydney 2013. Another piece employing the same materials is Wer im Glashaus sitzt... [If you have a glass house..., 2013] in which he reproduced the Haus der Kunst Museum in Munich, where the famous Degenerate Art exhibition took place during the fascist regime.
Orden aparente (Poético-Político) stresses the processual nature of Carlos Garaicoa's work showing various social realities by means of a wide range of languages and media which appeal to spectators and lead them to a space of reflection in which matters such as architecture's power to alter the course of history, the failure of modernity as a catalyst for social change and the demise of 20th century utopias, take centre stage.
