WORKS EXHIBITED
THE MUSEUM AS MEDIUM is an exhibition project consisting of different types of works that address the museum or institution as the substance and referent of the artwork. The show's departure point is the changing function of the museum, and it comprises the proposals of twenty artists who have in common their attitude toward the museum, not only as a container or exhibitor of works of art, but also as a place of action and experience, as a 'medium', in direct relation to the space and the context in which the works take place. Produced jointly by the MARCO of Vigo and Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea of San Sebastian, the project includes a large number of site-specific works produced for one or the other of these venues.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Pablo Fanego is an independent exhibition curator. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Vigo and his most recent endeavours include the project on art and public space A cidade interpretada, in Santiago de Compostela, with the participation of the artists Nathan Coley, Hans Schabus, Roman Ondak, Jorge Barbi, Germaine Kruip, Apolonija Sustersic, Carme Nogueira and Andre Guedes, and the solo show by Alicia Framis, Secret Strike, at the CGAC, Santiago de Compostela. His previous professional career is for the most part linked to the Luis Seoane Foundation in Corunna. At this centre he directed exhibition and publishing projects such as Trompe-la-memóire. Historia e visualidade, A construción do espectador and How soon is now? He also organized several workshops and activities related to contemporary art, such as the meetings Deseño das pasaxes ou Estruturas sen poder, carried out with the participation of the UIMP. He is currently preparing two solo shows with the artists Ibon Aranberri and Hans Schabus.
Pedro de Llano earned a bachelor's degree in History of Art at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He is currently preparing his doctoral dissertation at USC on Clement Greenberg's materialist criticism, based on research he developed at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He is participating on several research projects at USC on the relations between the cultural industry and the cityscape, and he is collaborating on USC's master in contemporary art programme. He is co-editor of the book En tiempo real: El arte mientras tiene lugar (Fundacion Luis Seoane, Corunna, 2001) together with Xose Lois Gutierrez. He was also documentation advisor for the exhibition A creación do necesario (MARCO, Vigo, 2004) and editor of Wrong Site: Arte y globalizacion (Fundacion Luis Seoane, 2008). He is contributor to the magazines Exit Express, Afterall online and the Vanguardia's supplement Cultura/s. He recently had three essays published, about the artists Tino Sehgal, Dan Graham, Fernando Jose Pereira, Hans Shabus, Vicente Blanco and Jose Carlos Teixeira.
SUMMARY OF THE EXHIBITION PROJECT
THE MUSEUM AS MEDIUM is an exhibition project consisting of different types of works that address the museum or the institution as the substance and referent of artworks. At the core of this project are the changes that have taken place - especially over the past fifteen years - in the functions and very concept of the museum, but also in artists' attitudes, in social uses and forms of behaviour, and in the crossover among diverse artistic disciplines. The curators' intention is to consider the museum as media and material, and as a system of historically established conventions.
The show comprises the proposals of twenty artists who have in common their attitude toward the museum, not as a container or exhibitor of works of art, but as a place for action and experience, as a 'medium', in direct relation to the space and the context in which the work takes place. By selecting the pieces and inviting these artists to create site-specific projects at the MARCO, in the city of Vigo, the intention of conceiving the museum as a place for projecting oneself is reinforced. It is not a chance coincidence that all the pieces in this show have to do with the human scale, with corporeity, with the encounter and relation of the person - whether the artist or the spectator - with the space in which the work is located. Among the exhibition projects undertaken at the MARCO, this may be the one which involves the most intervention on the site - with works that modify, reconstruct or reinterpret the interior spaces - and yet, the building's original structure has never been so visible.
The exhibition is articulated around a number of works made specifically for the participating institutions - the MARCO of Vigo and the Kolda Mitxelena of San Sebastian - and a series of shared pieces adapted to both venues. The museums' architectural spaces, daily routines and social context serve as signifiers of the exhibition's contents. In other words, in each case the museum has been pared down as far as possible so that it is the building itself - the 'medium' - which is the real object on display: the space is thus dimensioned, specified, and interpreted in its totality through the artists' actions and the participation of the public. The museum is perceived not only as a place of instruction or learning, in keeping with the nineteenth-century definition, but also as a place where the spectators' 'performative' attitude is stimulated as the ample catalogue of social routines that take place within its walls is called into question.
Among the new projects made for the first exhibition venue are works by Arabella Campbell, Maria Eichhorn, Loreto Martfnez Troncoso, Roman Ondak, Sergio Prego, Maider Lopez and Sancho Silva, which deal with themes such as the history of the former prison that today is home to the MARCO, the nature of Vigo society, the architecture of the museum and its exterior, and the behavioural patterns the spectator-user assumes once inside the museum. Alongside these interventions and completing the exhibition are pieces that have been previously displayed in other contexts and are now adapted to the spaces of Vigo and San Sebastian. These are the work of Lara Almarcegui, Monica Bonvicini, Annika Eriksson, Ceal Flayer, Andrea Fraser, Luca Frei, Mario Garcia-Torres, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jeppe Hein, Louise Lawler, Karin Sander, Tino Sehgal and Thomas Struth. While the greater part of the artists represented trained or began their artistic careers some time between the nineties and the present decade, we have also wanted to include works by other artists (Fraser, Gonzalez-Torres, Lawler, Struth) whose attitudes with regard to the above-mentioned transformations proved pivotal in subsequent artistic developments.