EXPRESSAN HORMIGÓN
MONOGRAPHIC IV. Compilation of 12 Artistic Pieces in cement/concrete
After the great reception of MONOGRAPHIC III comes the fourth edition, joining the commitment to continue innovating and improving in each Arte Hormigón compilation.
In this MONOGRAPHIC IV we have selected 12 international artistic projects that will take us through different conceptions of what the urban landscape is, as well as discovering different forms of expression of concrete.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
BLACKIE SWART – MARLIES HOEVERS – MARINA RODRIGUES – ANTONIO J. FONSECA – JOÃO BRAUN – BRAM BRAAM – ONEPROCESSART – JUAN LÓPEZ – INES SCHAIKOWSKI – LARA RUIZ – HARLEY FRY – ANDREAS ZINGERLE
El Hormigón como medio de interpretación
Matter is the first and foremost channel through which we relate to the environment around us, to the world, in short. It is what endures, what gives body to ideas. The matter that makes up a city and supports its existence is not only what we see in the form of buildings, roads and bridges. We could add the empty plots of land, the demolished buildings, the industrial legacy and all those ruins on which we build.
When we consider matter as a gestural element of language, it conveys different messages. Matter desires change and the actions that lead to it; it desires to grow, not only in space, but also in meaning, and, above all, matter desires to make tangible the intangible, the merely suggested or imagined. All these messages are found in the urban landscape, whose underlying content will help us to understand the unconscious ideology with which we shape the world.
The transformation or reinterpretation of the city does not only apply to Architecture as the art of matter. There is a certain fascination for the conversion of one object into another capable of expressing another reality through its new configuration, a fact that has accompanied art since the beginning of the 20th century. This was expressed in the Cubist and Dadaist creations with fragments of their surroundings and the association of different materialities.
In the case of the Brutalist movement, its eminent materiality has bequeathed us great examples of its art, now converted into ruins. Icons from the late seventies that arouse controversy due to the obsolescence of the material they have as a banner and the importance of their preservation insofar as they are part of the cultural legacy.
At what point do the remains of one city build a different city?
At what point does the combination of different perceptions facilitate the creation of a new artistic experience?
At what point does concrete cease to belong to one technique and one line of thought to create new forms of expression?
The Monographic IV compilation brings together twelve artistic projects made with this material, which give their own answer to these questions. The works are organised into three distinct blocks: in the first group, concrete expands in the midst of emotions; in the second group, concrete reconstructs the urban landscape; and in the third group, concrete has a reflective look, contributing a new visual language.
EXPRESSAN
I. Emociones estructurales
In his piece “Untitled V”, Blackie Swart works with the conceptual representation of that which cannot be recovered, symbolised in the element he introduces into the central cavity, which could be a memory, an idea or something of a material nature. The piece, even though concrete is its main component, is a sensitive and contained work, which makes us reflect on loss, both physical and emotional.
Blackie Swart
Blackie Swart (Oxford, Reino Unido) works in a variety of media, with works using materials such as concrete, corten steel and found objects. The artist’s work focuses on themes such as time, memory and the inaccessible.
Untitled V. 2021 ©Blackie Swart
Marlies Hoevers experiments with the qualities of concrete, evoking different emotions with the textures she is able to generate in her works. An example of this is the piece “QUIETUDE, nº 8”. In this work we can see a grey concrete with fissures and cracks invaded by the other material, this pigmented concrete, serene and with the traces of the formwork used on its skin. The work evokes a feeling of compression in its dichotomy, transmitting in the concrete that obligatory polyvalence that has been experienced so much in our homes during the pandemic.
Marlies Hoevers
Marlies Hoevers (Hollandsche Rading, 1979) combines her work as an artist with interior decoration, hence her strong fascination with materials and the feelings they provoke in people. In her latest works she has begun to experiment with concrete and textiles, using them to represent an emotional snapshot of her everyday experiences.
Serie QUIETUDE, nº 8. 2021 ©Marlies Hoevers
II. Reconstrucción del paisaje urbano
Marina Rodrigues‘ structures represent a metaphorical urban landscape. The piece “Fabrica Tangerina” poetically combines steel plates, concrete elements of different shapes and textures, and a small ceramic piece, suggesting buildings from her personal imagination. In a continuous dialogue with its surroundings, this work invites us to surround it to discover all that the different geometries of its silhouette want to tell us.
Marina Rodrigues
Marina Rodrigues (São Paulo, 1988) examines the urban landscape from a geometric perspective. Through sculptures, canvases and installations, she constructs and deconstructs the city, sometimes recreating space, sometimes idealising utopian spaces. His pieces are known for combining different materials in an aesthetic way, seeking visual balance.
Fabrica Tangerina. 2021 ©Marina Rodrigues
Antonio J. Fonseca presents the work “Fantasía para sociópata y metro cuadrado” (Fantasy for sociopath and square metre). The group of pigmented concrete pieces of different dimensions that make up the work represent constructions of a city in a cold and symbolic way. There is one of greater height that stands out among the others, in which we find a seated figure. His gaze through a large window is the reflection conveyed by the work: an urban landscape which, when passed through the prism of a vision of supposed power, is blurred and simplified.
Antonio J. Fonseca
Antonio J. Fonseca (Sevilla, 1961) is an artist who works primarily with photography, collage and assemblage art. His main themes include the destruction of the natural environment, isolation and a peculiar vision of the nature of time.
Fantasía para sociópata y metro cuadrado. 2021 ©Antonio J. Fonseca
João Braun presents the installation “The City”, consisting of 36 concrete cubes to which he applies a transfer print of images and drawings. Each independent piece tells its own story through the different activities, both day and night, that emanate from the daily life of the city, helping in the process to compose the identity of the city.
João Braun
João Braun (Lisboa, 1988) works with different techniques and means of expression. In his latest works we find concrete sculpture with transfer of his own minimalist drawings, adding a new vision to collecting.
La Ciudad. 2011 ©João Braun
In his sculptural works, Bram Braam revisits the materiality of the architectural landscape. His incessant research into the transformation processes and life cycles of built elements allows him to extract new readings of how we inhabit our environment, which he transfers to his works in a symbolic way. The memory contained in a piece of watery ground or a ruined wall suggests both nostalgia and the promise of new adventures.
Bram Braam
Bram Braam (Netherlands, 1980) creates sculptural works, wall reliefs and large-scale installations. He uses elements and materials found in urban space and decontextualises them to reflect on our built environments.
Sunrise adventures #11, 2021 ©Bram Braam (Cortesía: Galerie Burster, Berlin)
The piece “Industrial Sky” presented by the oneprocessart studio manifests the union between art, design and architecture. The body of the lamp, built in concrete, draws a skyline formed by industrial buildings and constructions located in the periphery and outskirts of the city of Seville. The combination of the silhouettes of the buildings with the light that illuminates them makes us think of a dawn, a new beginning full of possibilities and innovative spirit. A symbolic and elegant piece with which to recreate a minimalist atmosphere in the home.
oneprocessart
Oneprocessart is a creative studio that designs signature pieces based on the reinterpretation of construction processes to apply them to edited objects. In its latest work, the lamp series, it uses concrete as the main material, providing variations in shapes and a characteristic visual language.
Industrial Sky. 2021- Serie Lamp City ©oneprocessart
III. Observación, reflexión, simbolismo
The project “Locals Only”, presented by Juan López, is a mural composition in which he establishes a relationship between architecture and writing. In the bas-relief made in cement, letters and signs are drawn that at some point formed part of a signature found in the city. The new composition suggests another meaning beyond the linguistic, where the transfer to the interior of the museum has given power to the new forms.
Juan López
Juan López (Cantabria, 1979) is a specialist in ephemeral installations, the key to which is the intense analysis of the space in which he exhibits. His artistic production uses metaphor as a resource and is directed towards a sculptural intervention on architecture and urban space, which he uses as a source of his own language.
Locals Only. 2018 ©Juan López
The piece presented by Ines Schaikowski, “s.t. de la serie Cubo Hybride Heimat”, is understood as a critical reflection on the present through experimentation and the combination of materials with different properties and contexts. The rectangular concrete block, with a markedly urban character, represents the exterior, while the objects protruding from it, in this case facial wipes, speak to us of how we inhabit and relate to each other.
Ines Schaikowski
Ines Schaikowski (Brandenburg, 1981) investigates different places as socio-cultural, natural and urban spaces, questioning their characteristics and functioning and bringing them to artistic expression. She is currently working on the project Hybride Heimat, which is understood as a critical reflection of the present, dealing with concepts such as Heimat (home, my land), and placing the human being at the centre of all study experiences.
s.t. de la serie Cubo Hybride Heimat. 2020 ©Ines Schaikowski
The piece “Time and Matter”, presented by Lara Ruiz, belongs to the Terreno Modular series. A project that analyses the different reliefs and tonalities of cities to tell us about the passage of time and the compositional diversity it integrates, as if it were urban archaeology. The tile, made of pigmented concrete, represents the material that is symbolically transformed as the waves of the sea pass, acting as a gauge of time.
Lara Ruiz
Lara Ruiz (Salamanca, 1986) is a visual artist who works with installations, sculpture and painting. She combines her artistic work with teaching and cultural management. In her projects she shows a great interest in collaborative practices.
TIEMPO Y MATERIA. 2021 ©Lara Ruiz
The concrete in the piece HAMERSLEY, presented by Harley Fry, combines the natural and the artificial through its appearance and form, suggesting an iceberg or a rocky landscape. A reflective sculpture where the use of Bloom cement and the handwork of steel serve to express the coexistence between the different productive processes.
Harley Fry
Harley Fry (Australia) is the director of The Pluto Program (TPP), which was set up to create environmentally friendly landscape products using his own cement, called Bloom. In his sculptural work he explores the relationship between the natural and industrial environment with an innovative craft technique, demonstrating his mastery of materials.
HAMERSLEY ©Harley Fry
Andreas Zingerle‘s abstract sculptures are a reflection of the study of concrete and the limits of what can be represented. In the piece “Head” he transforms a light, malleable shell (an inflatable sex doll) into a static, heavy object, transforming lightness into heaviness, emptiness into mass, the ethereal into the earthly. An object to which the concrete gives a presence charged with meaning, taking it out of its intimacy and into the exterior and the public space.
Andreas Zingerle
Andreas Zingerle (Bressanone (Italia), 1963) is an artist with a solid career working both in painting and sculpture. As a sculptor he chooses concrete to rethink the density, mass and volume of everyday objects, which he separates from their usual context.
Cabezas 2012-15 ©Andreas Zingerle
MONOGRAPHIC IV, COMPILATION OF 12 PIECES IN CEMENT/CONCRETE
Thanks to all participants for their kindness and for being part of this fourth edition.
BLACKIE SWART – MARLIES HOEVERS – MARINA RODRIGUES – ANTONIO J. FONSECA – JOÃO BRAUN – BRAM BRAAM – ONEPROCESSART – JUAN LÓPEZ – INES SCHAIKOWSKI – LARA RUIZ – HARLEY FRY – ANDREAS ZINGERLE
- Organiza y promueve: EXPRESSAN
- Dirección: Sandra Galindo
- Colabora en la edición y equipo: Estudio oneprocessart
- Créditos de las fotografías-audiovisuales: ©sus autores y artistas
Don’t miss the Interviews with the participating artists!
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Contacto
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info@expressan.com
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Love concrete as a sculpting medium.
Us too, Roelna! Thanks for visiting Expressan. We’ll let you know about Monographic V