“Time Capsules” presents new works by four young Spanish artists living in London. The artists, working across different media, will present pieces that freely respond to questions and notions such as memory and history, psychogeography, the blurring of the “past/present/future” categorization and the possibility of the work of art to preserve and enclose a singular experience or feeling relevant to the artist.
The question of the work of art as a vehicle for nostalgia and its evocative powers are also key for the exhibition. “Time Capsules” aims to investigate the synaesthetic phenomena occurring in art, manifested in its capacity to touch upon different sensorial experiences and activate hidden memories and feelings, the way a certain smell can transport us to a very particular space and moment in time. Therefore, the concept of the work of art as tool for evocations and invocations is crucial for the show.
The exhibition features four installations, three of them specifically commissioned for the occasion, by five London-based Spanish artists: anak&monoperro, David Fernando Giraut, Julia Mariscal and Pablo Padilla Jargstof.
Artist: Anak + Monoperro, David Ferrando, Julia Mariscal & Pablo Padilla
When: Thu, 04/11/2010 – Sun, 14/11/2010
Event Times: Mon-Sat 12-19h; Sun 12-17h Private view: 18:30-21h.
Venue: The Spain NOW! pop-up Space @ The Gallery.Soho
Venue Details: 125 Charing Cross Road; London, WC2H 0EW
Private View 4th November from 6.30pm.
Curated by Lorena Munoz-Alonso.
The shamanic rituals of anak&monoperro’s ‘Treasure of Fears’ (2010) sit between the performance, the documentation of that action and the display of a resulting object as a second, but never final, stage. Establishing symbolic connections between the ‘time capsule’ and the ‘hidden treasure’ this is almost an alchemical piece of work that promises spiritual freedom to whoever is willing to believe.
‘Ruin Builder’ (2008) by David Ferrando Girault explores the notion of technology as a time-warping device, offering in the present time an event, experience or person that belongs to the past. The idea of the ghost (something or sometime present in absence) haunts Fernando Giraut’s practice, and obsolete or ‘retro’ technology is favoured way to represent that rupture within the contemporary realm.
Julia Mariscal has created ‘The Mirror Says’ (2010) a complex installation comprising several parts in which she plays with the idea of the time capsule itself. This is a work that draws heavily in psychoanalysis figures, such as the ‘I’, the ‘Other’ and the world of ‘Dreams’ and how they converse with the Rorschach test as theatrical backdrop.
‘Resonance of Things to Come’ (2010) by Pablo Padilla Jargstorf is a space built within the gallery. Real-time and recorded sound, children’s tales and quantum physics co-exist here, creating a platform where different time-frames of different people coincide as remembrances of something that never actually happened.