Presentation
Curators
Exhibition credits
Opening: December 12th – 17:00
Curators: Amanda de la Garza, Cuauhtémoc Medina and Ferran Barenblit
Collaboration: Fundación Proa in collaboration with the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo de Madrid and Muac Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México
Sponsored: Organización Techint- Ternium Siderar
Fundación Proa presents the first exhibition in Argentina by artist Jeremy Deller, to take place from December 12, 2015 through March 2016. A selection of the artist’s work will span the range of his practice, from the 1990s to the present day. Deller is the winner of the 2004 Turner Prize and the 2010 Albert Medal of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). Throughout his career, he has worked in a variety of artistic disciplines, including photography, video art, and installation, and has revived a pop – or “popular” – aesthetic in each of his projects. Many such pieces are included in the exhibition, offering a distinctive overview of his artistic vision.
Deller’s critical reflection on English culture (its historical contradictions and politics, as well as its identity as a post-industrial and multicultural society) provides a global analysis that traverses both time and borders. As the artist states: “I am careful not to reveal my own opinions too forcefully. Obviously, in composing an artwork, you do reveal something, but I do not want to make a political work in the same way an activist would. I want to grant it a bit more poetry, a bit more space, so that the public can get involved…I want to leave a little room for thought and not tell the viewers what to think.”
Historical events appear, for example, in Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave, which reenacts the struggle of British miners and their confrontation with police forces in the 1980s, or in his video on Adrian Street, a British miner who became a transvestite wrestler. In the curators’ words: “If Deller’s work takes shape as a multifaceted process of investigation, it is because it belongs to the rich history of the observers, critics, and thinkers of industrial society.”
The sequences and dialogues between videos, period posters, and references to the ludic in English Magic, as well as depictions of Deller’s childhood bathroom, provide the exhibition with a panorama of juxtaposed artistic languages, which speak to the multiplicity of images and the diverse practices involved in contemporary art.
Biographical sketch
JeremyDeller
(London,1966).
(London, 1966). Lives and works in London. Studied Art History at the University of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2004 he was awarded the Turner Prize, and in 2010 he was decorated with the Albert Medal from the Royal Society of Arts. Although he works with a variety of media, including video, sculpture, and graphic art, his work has emphasized collaborative projects, reenactments, and public art, through which he has reflected on popular culture in postindustrial England. His most important projects include: Acid Brass (1997), Folk Archive (from 1999, in collaboration with Alan Kane), The Battle of Orgreave (2001), Procession (2009) and Sacrilege (2012). Some of his most outstanding exhibitions are: English Magic for the British Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the retrospective Joy in People, Hayward Gallery (2012), and Carte blanche à Jeremy Deller, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2008). He has also developed remarkable curatorial projects, including: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (2013), The Bruce Lacey Experience (2012), and British Council Collection: My Yard (2009), among others.
Amanda de la Garza Mata
Lives and works in Mexico City. She holds a BA in Sociology (UNAM), an MA in Cultural Anthropology (UAM-Iztapalapa), and an MA in Curatorial Studies (UNAM). She has been Associate Curator at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC, UNAM) since 2012. De la Garza Mata has co-curated the exhibitions Mina 8. Unidad Pasta de Conchos, Colección: el crímen fundacional, andJonas Mekas. She works as an editor in the independent publisher Tabasco189 Ediciones, a project focused on establishing links between contemporary art and literature. She also forms part of the collective Ciudad Ilusoria, an audiovisual platform that reflects upon urbanism, architecture, and urban anthropology. The audiovisual collective has produced three documentary films since 2009. De la Garza Mata has co-organized the poetry festival Enclave at the International Book Fair of the Mining Palace (2012 and 2013). She has published art reviews, research articles, and poems in local and international journals and catalogues on a wide variety of subjects, such as industrial design, architecture, urbanism, contemporary dance, poetry, photography, public art, and contemporary art.
Ferran Barenblit
(Buenos Aires, 1968)
He is director of Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). Before he directed the CA2M, Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona and curated a number of exhibition cycles at Espacio 13 in the Fundació Joan Miró.
He has also worked at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York as the director’s as- sistant to Marcia Tucker. He has given seminars and conferences on curatorial practice in vario- us museums and universities around the world. In 2008, he was co-curator of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, in New Mexico.
He forms part of the board of directors of the International Association of Curators of Contem- porary Art (IKT) and the Spanish Contemporary Art Directors Association (ADACE)”.
Cuauhtémoc Medina
(Ciudad de México, 1965)
(Mexico City, December 5 1965)
Art critic, curator and historian, holds a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art from the University of Essex in Britain. Since 1993 he has been a full time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and between 2002 and 2008 was the first Associate Curator of Art Latin American Collections at the Tate Modern. He is cu- rrently Chief Curator at the MUAC Museum in Mexico city.
In 2012, Medina was Head Curator of the Manifesta 9 Biennial in Genk, Belgium, titled The Deep of the Modern, in association with Katerina Gregos and Dawn Ades. He is currently the Chief Curator of the MUAC, University Contemporary Art Museum, in Mexico City.
In 2012 he became the sixth recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement of the Menil Foundation.
Jeremy Deller. The infinitely variable ideal of the popular
Organization
Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires
CA2M - Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Comunidad de Madrid
MUAC - Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, México D.F.
Direction
Adriana Rosenberg - PROA
Ferran Barenblit - CA2M
Cuauhtémoc Medina - MUAC
Curatorship
Ferran Barenblit - CA2M
Amanda de la Garza – Cuauhtémoc Medina - MUAC
Exhibition Coordination
Cintia Mezza - PROA
Víctor de las Heras Iglesias - CA2M
Production Coordination
Cecilia Jaime - PROA
Ignacio Macua Roy - CA2M
Joel Aguilar - MUAC
Installation Design
Pablo Zaefferer – Soledad Oliva - PROA
Ignacio Macua Roy - CA2M
Benedeta Monteverde – Cecilia Pardo - MUAC
Teaching Program
Paulina Guarnieri - Rosario García Martínez - Camila Villarruel - Agostina Gabanetta PROA
Pablo Martínez - CA2M
Pilar Ortega - MUAC
Educators - PROA
Noemí Aira- Cora Papic - Juan Carlos Urrutia - PROA
Communication Coordination
Josefina Insausti – Víctor López Zumelzu - PROA
Carmen Ruíz - MUAC
Rosa Naharro - CA2M