- Dates
- —
- Curated by
- Vicenç Altaió i Glòria Picazo
Collective: Water and Water
Press release
Water and Water group exhibition
Fundació Joan Miró’s Espai 10, Taste and Differences season
Dates: 3 to 27 April 1986
Opening: Thursday 3 April at 7.30 pm
A group exhibition on the common denominator of water will open at the Fundació Joan Miró’s Espai 10 on 3 April, the seventh exhibition in its Taste and Differences season, organised in collaboration with the art critic Glòria Picazo and the writer Vicenç Altaió.
Curated by Glòria Picazo, the exhibition Water and Water brings together twelve artists and an art collective from a variety of backgrounds. Following the general trend of this Espai 10 season, the exhibition aims to confront Catalan artists with artists from other countries, in this case France, Belgium, Germany and the United States.
The show intends to offer a specific range of some of the many possible examples in which water has become a radical protagonist: water not as a pictorial representation, but as a determining, poetic and suggestive element of an artistic proposal.
The works gathered here clearly demonstrate the diversity of languages that currently dominate contemporary art: from sculpture to installation, from videotape to video installation, and even photography as both a work and an artistic memory.
Gabriel is one of the Catalan artists, an artist who has undoubtedly worked most consistently with the theme of water in recent times. Ramon Guillén Balmes will also be presenting documentation on buoys at sea; Joan Duran, the sculpture Igneous Waters, a piece that transforms water into energy (steam); and finally, the Valencian artist Miguel Navarro will be presenting the first work in which he incorporated water: a sculptural irrigation ditch that would later give rise to his current fountain projects.
Among the French participants, Noël Cuin and Miguel Egaña reveal a clear interest in the world of everyday objects, and their allusions to water are more suggestive and poetic than obvious. For its part, the Lyon collective Frigo is presenting a video installation entitled Water, in which five TV sets are suspended above buckets of water.
The Belgian group of artists, comprising Hugo Roelandt, Greet Verlinden, Marc Holthof and Jan Heremans, is presenting two installations: Window Wiper Automobile, based on the installation of ten windscreens over the Fundació Joan Miró’s north courtyard pond that only work when the sun shines – like a mechanical form of photosynthesis, the artists claim – and The Shape of Water, a project to transport, store and display water using five plastic containers.
The German artist Nils Udo has long chosen nature as his field of artistic endeavour, and his Water House photography is an example of his interventions with water as a medium and natural elements as a structure.
Finally, the American video artist Bill Viola is presenting a video that serves as an introductory prologue to the exhibition.
Joan Duran’s installation Igneous Waters will be on display on 3 and 5 April at 7.30 pm.
Barcelona, 13 May 1986
