Aura
Artissima 2016

Aural presents, for the main section Artissima 2016, a project that raises a reflection from the perspective of four very significant artists of contemporary Spanish and international scene have contributed with great consistency to configure this from a generational perspective, linked together by a work of conceptual character.

Anna Bella Geiger is one of the most considered Brazilian artists on the international scene that have been working since 2008 and participated in a Solo Project Focus ARCO Latin America in 2014, PINTA London 2014 and we had the pleasure from our gallery to show her first solo exhibition in Spain in 2014.

Geiger was one of the pioneer to use unconventional media to experiment with other approaches and questioning about what was happening in her country in the 70s, during the military dictatorship. A circunstance that establishes a relationship of similarity to what happened in Spain. A time anxious of freedom, when a new sensibility surfaced which led to a break with traditional languages: crosscutting disciplines, the integration into the creative process of mechanisms relating to philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics, technology, popular culture, science, architecture, music of language.

Thus we justify connecting the work of Anna Bella Geiger with Spanish artistas working simultaneously in Spain, as it is the case of Concha Jerez, whose work we have shown in our stand last year in the section Back to the Future. She was awarded the National Prize of Visual Arts during her stay in Artissima last edition. This approach creates a sense of temporal and chronological dialogue where concerns are very similar, where the breaking of conventional artistic practices are put into question to make room fot others issues related to the historical momento and the life experience of the artista. Their common ground: the work of arts as a reflective activity both mental and experimental.

Continuing this dialogue, we move to the generation of artists, whose careers began after the dictatorship, in the 80s, as Fernando Sinaga and José Maldonado. Artists whose concerns and reflections are base don conceptual premises, however, each develops its own languagewith significant contributions to contemporary art throughout their careers; fundamental contributions to understand the national artscene in the past and present. They have been participating in the international exhibitions and projects in recent decades, giving an example of coherence and consistency despite the several crises, not only personal and artistic, but also structurals.

These are artists who have been especially interested in exploring a new área of aesthetic speculation that seemed to represent a dramatic break with usual activities of production, contemplation and artistic appreciation; where the procedural is almos tan attitude and modus operandi, where the end product of art, the art object, is not the ultimate goal. The work is under constant review and reconsideration. The work becomes action in time. It is not document, but an event thet takes place here and now.