The film is part of the Z Gallery programme and portrays a territory in transformation after years of abandonment of agricultural activity. The film combines scenes shot on 16 mm film as well as images obtained by digital means.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents the premiere of Paraíso, a new film by the directors Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro, produced as part of Artium Museum’s Z Gallery programme. The film leads us through a territory in transformation that its inhabitants want to recover after decades of abandonment of agricultural activity. Barber and Lameiro combine filmed scenes with images recorded by using digital data capture technologies. In order to mark this exhibition, Artium Museum has published a publication with an essay by María Palacios Cruz, curator, lecturer and researcher on moving images. The film was produced in collaboration with the Mondragon Corporation. The Z Gallery programme is curated by Garbiñe Ortega.

The film begins in darkness with the sound of a woman’s voice describing the images that she sees or has been allowed to see. As María Palacios Cruz explains: “She understands them as referring to ‘death’, but there is no sadness, no heaviness about them. It is all part of the natural order of things; death and life are inseparable. Later, we will learn that the images the woman is describing are the voices of trees in a woodland area that has been marked for deforestation”. After the villages in the Arce Valley were abandoned in the 1960s, the Government of Navarre planted pine trees in the fields that were tilled or used as pasture for animals. More than 50 years later, they have decided to cut down the pine trees in one of these villages to recover the fields, the agricultural practices and the way of life that was on the verge of disappearing with the depopulation of the rural areas in favour of the cities. Its inhabitants have always called this place “Paradise”.

Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro have made this film by combining analogue 16mm filming, with its specific texture, and digital image capture using a three-dimensional landscape scanner. The exhibition also includes a series of topographic maps and orthophotographs from various periods that show the successive transformation of this territory of the Arce Valley, in addition to a herbarium with samples collected in the area where the film was shot. The project is completed by a series of making-of stills and a sound piece that preserves the memory of the sounds of the forest.

Paraíso is the first collaboration between Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro. Both Barber and Lameiro have engaged with collective and participatory processes before, but more than an exchange between their respective artistic practices, Paraíso proposes one with (and between) the inhabitants of the forests around Lakabe, both human and non-human; a story told by the trees that are to be felled to make way for pastureland.

The exhibition reviews a series of historical pedagogical practices based on self-construction and play to create a space for meeting and learning. The exhibition also includes works by artists such as Carme Nogueira, Raphael Escobar and Abraham Cruzvillegas

Artium Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents the exhibition Self-construction. Loose Parts. Play and Experience. Antonio Ballester Moreno (A3 Gallery, until 1 November 2021). The project stems from Artium’s process of reflecting on its relationship with its urban and social context and specifically on the potential of its inner courtyard as a meeting point for its surrounding area. Ballester, an artist with whom Artium has discussed this issue, reviews a series of historical pedagogical practices based on self-construction and play to create in this project, which has been designed not to be an exhibition in the usual sense, a space for meeting and learning. The exhibition, which also includes works by Carme Nogueira, Raphael Escobar and Abraham Cruzvillegas, is curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa and has been produced in collaboration with Dinamoa Sormen Gunea in Azpeitia and the students and teaching staff of Barrutia Ikastola in Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Antonio Ballester Moreno’s exhibition Self-construction. Loose Parts. Play and Experience is the result of various collaborative processes that were begun as part of Plazaratu, the reflection process on Artium’s connection as an institution and architectural structure with its surroundings and its ability to become a meeting point and centre for social relations.

Ballester Moreno uses methods tied to pedagogy in his artistic practice and in several projects involves groups of schoolchildren and occasionally adults to shape an initial idea. In his proposal for Artium Museum, the artist has referred to a series of pedagogical practices developed in the 20th century that were based on self-construction as play as well as to transforming action – building, rebuilding, repairing, remodelling – into a way of learning, education and living. The English architect Lady Allen of Hurtwood, the Danish activist Palle Nielsen, the Italian architect Enzo Mari and the English artist Simon Nicholson are some of the figures that inspired these experiences, as the curator Ángel Calvo Ulloa explains at length in the publication accompanying this exhibition.

Artium’s A3 Gallery is therefore housing objects produced in the workshops conducted in spring by Antonio Ballester Moreno in an educational centre such as Barrutia Ikastola in Vitoria-Gasteiz and in a creative space such as Dinamoa Sormen Gunea in Azpeitia.

In the case of Barrutia Ikastola, following the practice of Enzo Mari and his autoprogettazione? manual, as well as Simon Nicholson’s Theory of Loose Parts, the artist invited students, families and teachers to participate in a workshop to construct furniture. Created using basic pieces and tools and following plans and instructions produced for that purpose, these objects – tables, benches, platforms, cabins – have converted the A3 Gallery into a square, a park that also opens up to Artium’s outdoor area, to its urban garden.

The exhibition also includes the installation of a large mural measuring 30 metres long by 4 metres high that features a set of 164 silkscreen prints produced in the workshop that Ballester Moreno directed at Dinamoa Sormen Gunea based on the designs proposed by the artist.

This tendency of Ballester Moreno “to work on projects that are diluted in the collective”, as the curator points out, is underlined by the invitation to other artists to participate in Self-construction...: Carme Nogueira and the workshops she developed based on Buñuel's documentary Las Hurdes, Tierra Sin Pan and the innovative pedagogical experiences developed in that region of Extremadura in the 1930s, Raphael Escobar and Os Cupins das Artes and the workshops conducted with homeless people in São Paulo, and Abraham Cruzvillegas and the processes of self-construction rooted in the working-class neighbourhoods of Mexico City that can be traced back in his artistic practice.

Ballester Moreno has staged solo exhibitions at Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid; La Casa Encendida in Madrid; MAZ in Guadalajara, Mexico; MUSAC in León; Galería Maisterra-Valbuena in Madrid; Pedro Cera in Lisbon; Christopher Grimes in Santa Monica, and Peres Projects in Berlin and Los Angeles. He has also participated in group exhibitions, such as at the 33rd Sao Paulo Biennial, as artist and curator, MSU Broad Museum in  Michigan and CA2M in Madrid, as well as in galleries in New York, Berlin and Los Angeles, among others. His work can be found in the collections of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, MUSAC in León, CA2M in Madrid, Colección Iberdrola and Fundación Helga de Alvear.

Press release (pdf)  Image request  List of works  Exhibition

Antonio Ballester Moreno. Self-construction. Loose Parts. Play and Experience
A3 Gallery, from 25 June to 1 November 2021
Curator: Ángel Calvo Ulloa
Publication with essay by Ángel Calvo Ulloa
Conversation with the artist: Friday 25 June at 6pm
Special opening hours: open continuously from 11am to 8pm
This exhibition has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of Barrutia Ikastola in Vitoria-Gasteiz and Dinamoa Sormen Gunea in Azpeitia

This is a major group of drawings and sculptures, five of which are watercolours in various formats belonging to the series Tuya gigante, tuya occidental that have recently been added to the Artium Collection.

Contexts from a Collection, as well as the case studies and rotations within the Zeru bat, hamaika bide exhibition, aims to increase the visibility of Artium’s outstanding contemporary collection.

Artium Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents, as part of its Contexts from a Collection programme, a group of five recently acquired watercolours in various formats by the artist Nadia Barkate belonging to the series Tuya gigante, tuya occidental (A02 Gallery, until 5 September 2021). These pieces are contextualised with a selection of works by Barkate, watercolours and blown glass sculptures produced over the past three years. Contexts from a Collection is a series of exhibitions dedicated to showcasing the work of artists who have recently been added to Artium’s collection of works. 

Nadia Barkate’s work refers to the space-time of drawing and its inertias. It also refers to the flow between technique and desire, the imprint that experience leaves on the body and notions of identity, interiority and otherness, among other things. There is a certain narrative will that links the everyday, the manual and the word in her practice. She deals with traditional gestures and techniques that go beyond the edges and lose form or sharpness, lucidity or hallucination.

Tuya gigante, tuya occidental belongs to a group of small and large format watercolours that Barkate produced throughout 2018. They emerged, according to the artist, from moments of self-absorption in her studio in which she became aware of the gestures she would make with her hands while she was concentrating.

Nadia Barkate has recently had exhibitions in venues such as Okela (Bilbao), Galería MPA (Madrid), Galleria Nappa and Studio Mustanapa, (Rovaniemi, 2021), Lìtost Gallery (Prague, 2020), Bombón Projects (Barcelona, 2019), Westfälischer Kunstverein (Münster, 2019), Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao (2018), Tabakalera (San Sebastián, 2018), Ethall (Barcelona, 2018), Alhóndiga (Bilbao, 2018), Carreras Múgica (Bilbao, 2015), Altes Finanzamt (Berlin, 2015), Espai 01 (Olot, 2012) and Montehermoso (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2010), among others.

Contexts from a Collection

Thus, in addition to the permanent exhibition of the Artium Collection, Zeru bat, hamaika bide, the A01 Gallery generally hosts case studies and exhibitions linked to research work and the 1977-2002 period displayed in this exhibition. The Zeru bat, hamaika bide exhibition is periodically changed to add new internal routes. The creation of the #Bilduma series in Artium’s publications programme shares this same goal.

Artium’s acquisition programme helps to explore and report on the debates and practices taking place in the field of art today, as well as being an essential tool for sounding out a moment characterised by its dynamism and complexity. This is one of the basic tasks of the museum: to encourage the production of contemporary heritage and promote artists and their productions.

The exhibition presents eleven proposals that include photographs, installations and objects belonging to a variety of series but with the same spatial logic.

Salaberria meaningfully brings to the forefront the space and its ability to condition behaviour and the way we look and feel.

Artium Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents An Exhibition without Architecture by Xabier Salaberria (A1 Gallery, until 3 October 2021). The exhibition presents eleven groups of works that include photographs, installations and objects connected to questions such as the function of architecture, the representation of landscape and territory and the technical aspects of museography. Each work maintains its own entity while complementing each other under the same spatial logic. Alongside the artist’s latest productions, there are older works in addition to the memory of earlier proposals. Artium has produced a publication to mark the exhibition that contains an essay by the art historian and writer Lars Bang Larsen. An Exhibition without Architecture is curated by Beatriz Herráez and Enrique Martínez Goikoetxea. 

The work of Xabier Salaberria (San Sebastian, 1969) alternates between the fields of sculpture, design and the organisation of spaces and architecture. His practice is rooted in studying the history of techniques, materials and objects. Photography, drawing and installation are the media the artist has used in works such as the one created as part of his exhibition at Artium Museum. A space that he has interpreted and in which he has intervened on the basis of analysing various exhibition displays, outlining a system of routes in the rooms to explore the proposed junctions between the technical aspects of museography, the functions and history(ies) of architecture and the representation of landscape and territory.

Where does a title such as Una exposición sin arquitectura (An Exhibition Without Architecture) by Salaberria lead us? The mental image that is built behind a statement of this kind would bring us closer to an abstract space in which a variety of objects would be free of any spatial conditioning factors, as part of a kind of exercise in which the object would be shown in all its formal and conceptual purity. But every exhibition is always a representation, a constructed space, and it is the architecture in its encounter with the object that is going to acquire special import in his proposal. Through this negation, the artist meaningfully brings to the forefront the space, its walls, heights, routes, etc. and how these condition our behaviour and our way of looking at and feeling the works it contains. Already from its title, Salaberria has created a space for speculation in which to consider the power of architecture, exhibition and display, and how these influence the narrative and our reading.

The artist has collaborated with museums and institutions over the past few years in designing the exhibitions of other authors and this informs us of his ability to interpret and identify the gestures and traces of spaces, materials and architectures in shaping meaning. The author critically analyses concepts, attitudes and discourses in those as pects where theoretical positioning is tied to the practice of space. In Artium, and in line with this process tied to the spectator’s experience, Salaberria has recently participated in thinking about a place such as the museum’s inner courtyard, as part of an exercise in translating the language that addresses an architectural logic of the building, which is that of use, transit and rest, with the aim of actively incorporating it into the museum’s daily life. The artist has opened up spaces to be seen, eliminated barriers and suggested pragmatic meeting places where architecture, design and function meet within the context of the museum.

The exhibition contains eleven proposals that include photographs, installations and objects. Originating from a variety of series, the works maintain their own entity while complementing each other under the same spatial logic. Alongside these works, most of which have been produced in the last two years, the exhibition incorporates the memory of earlier proposals. The installation that gives the project its title, Una exposición sin arquitectura, from this same year, is therefore made up of a series of modular panels on which hang images, plans and projects of works carried out as a designer of exhibitions and spaces – including the one produced for the museum.

Altered in position, colour and function, they create a territory combining functional and symbolic application, a common occurrence in his artistic practice. The exhibition includes other works such as r de radio, an installation produced in 2020, in which four vertical metal display stands show a collection of broken glass, or Bézier (2020), eight aluminium plates that transfer the silhouettes of glass fragments to a flat medium in the form of a text. Alongside several photographs from previous moments in his career, a new series of photographs is also included, a frieze of five images taken in Agiña. The photographs highlight the accidents, fortuitous or not, on the surfaces and edges of the monument that Jorge Oteiza produced as a tribute to Father Donostia. They seemingly bring the sacred space 29 of Oteiza’s microlithic cromlech into dialogue with the profane space of the crags of the cliffs of Aya, as well as with the memory of the monument and the accidental or violent casual shapes of its silhouette. The photographs also subvert the usual conventions and norms of exhibition. It is through these alterations that Salaberria calls attention to space, to architecture, to devices as elements that create meaning in the place where they are installed.

Xabier Salaberria lives and works in Donostia. His period of training was linked to the Arteleku Art Centre, where he took part in workshops such as those given by Txomin Badiola and Ángel Bados in 1998, or Peio Irazu in the same year, a meeting and discussion space that he has continued to maintain as a place of work and reference over time. The many residency programmes in which he has participated have led him to spend long periods of time abroad – which has given his work greater visibility – and he has collaborated in projects curated by Peio Agirre, Chus Martínez, Lars Bang Larsen and Catalina Lozano, among others. His most recent exhibitions include r de radio, Carreras Múgica, Bilbao (2020); Ganar Perdiendo, Centro Centro, Madrid (2019); Restos materiales, obstáculos y herramientas, 32nd São Paulo Art Biennial (2016); Can-ni-faire, Carreras Múgica (2016); Proceso y Método. (A.T.M.O.T.W.) Xabier Salaberria, Bilbao Guggenheim (2013); The Society Without Qualities, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2013), and Inkontziente-Kontziente (Scenario1 about Europe), GFZK, Leipzig 2011.

He was awarded the Gure Artea Award in 2008, the Marcelino Botín Foundation Creation Grant in 2009 and the Art and Research Grant from the Montehermoso Art Centre in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 2011. In addition to the Artium Collection, his work can be found in public collections and museums such as MACBA in Barcelona, Marcelino Botín Foundation in Santander, TEA Collection in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Sabadell Collection, and Fine Arts Museum and Guggenheim Museum, both in Bilbao.

Curators: Beatriz Herráez, Enrique Martínez Goikoetxea

Cardón Cardinal is the result of exploring the moving of an endemic cactus specimen from Mexico to Seville for the Universal Exposition of 1992.

The Z Gallery programme in 2021 will present four productions by artists and filmmakers sharing the languages of art and film.

Artium Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country is launching its Z Gallery programme (Z for zinema, cinema in Basque) with the film by Patricia Esquivias entitled Cardón Cardinal, the result of exploring the moving of a giant cactus, an 18-ton cardon, from Mexico to Seville for the Universal Exposition of 1992. The screening is contextualised with a selection of objects and notes by the artist linked to completing the project. The Z Gallery constructs a space in Artium Museum to draw attention to works by artists making the leap into the cinematographic field and filmmakers exploring the exhibition format. Maddi Barber and Marina Lameiro, Rosalynd Nashashibi and Éric Baudelaire are part of the 2021 programme, which is curated by Garbiñe Ortega, researcher and artistic director of the Punto de Vista Festival. 

Cardón Cardinal tells an extended version of an event that occurred 26 years ago: moving a giant cactus, a Pachycereus pringlei, 17 metres high and weighing 18 tons, from the deserts of Baja California to the gardens of the Mexican Pavilion for the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992.We see a computer screen that presents us with the images of a trip to Mexico and another to Seville, while a voiceover shares with us the research carried out in an attempt to understand the presence of this abandoned cactus in Seville.

Patricia Esquivias was born in Caracas and grew up in Madrid. She trained in London (1997- 2001) and furthered her studies in San Francisco (2005-2007). Her work has been displayed in solo exhibitions at Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, Langenhagen Kunstverein, Stacion Pristina, CA2M Móstoles, MARCO Vigo, Hammer Museum, Museo Reina Sofía and White Columns, as well as in group exhibitions such as Querer parecer noche, CA2M; Arte y cultura en torno a 1992, CAAC; Ficciones y territorios, Museo Reina Sofía, and When Things Cast No Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art.

The exhibition encompasses eight reference audiovisual pieces in the use of animated images during the period of transition from analogue medium to digital creation.

The exhibition presents a selection of works made by the artist over the past five years, several of them produced for this exhibition

A selection of various series of paintings, objects and installations, some of them never seen before, provides an approach to the artist’s career.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents a programme of solo and group exhibitions that develop its main strands of work. Two of its core principles in 2021 will continue to be the inclusion of women artists in its temporary exhibition programme and Permanent Collection and its public legacy conservation and research.

Artium Museum will this year also focus on studying the links between artistic and educational practices with two group exhibitions on the crossovers and exchanges between art and pedagogy in the Basque Country since the 1960s and various historical experiences that have had a bearing on learning and art’s capacity to be an element of change. The second edition of the JAI (Institute of Artistic Practices) study programme will take place within this context in collaboration with CICC Tabakalera.

Film and moving images will also be major strands in its 2021 programme with the launch of an exhibition project of films produced by artists and filmmakers in a new exhibition space –Gallery Z– beginning in May with a line-up of international guest artists visiting the Museum.

Lorea Alfaro | Gerardo Armesto | Txaro Arrazola | A Place to Think: Experimental Art Practices and Schools in the Basque Country (1963-73) | Antonio Ballester Moreno | Juncal Ballestín | Maddi Barber+Marina Lameiro | Nadia Barkate | Eric Baudelaire | Katinka Bock | Mariana Castillo Deball | June Crespo | Moyra Davey | Patricia Esquivias | José Félix González Placer | Daniel Llaría | Rosalind Nashashibi | Xabier Salaberria | Zeru bat, hamaika bide. Bigarren bidea / Constructing a Public Legacy

See complete programme (pdf) 

Cardón Cardinal tells an extended version of an event that occurred 26 years ago: moving a giant cactus, a Pachycereus pringlei, 17 metres high and weighing 18 tons, from the deserts  of Baja California to the gardens of the Mexican Pavilion for the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992.We see a computer screen that presents us with the images of a trip to Mexico and another to Seville, while a voiceover shares with us the research carried out in an attempt to understand the presence of this abandoned cactus in Seville.

Patricia Esquivias was born in Caracas and grew up in Madrid. She trained in London (1997- 2001) and furthered her studies in San Francisco (2005-2007). Her work has been displayed in solo exhibitions at Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, Langenhagen Kunstverein, Stacion Pristina, CA2M Móstoles, MARCO Vigo, Hammer Museum, Museo Reina Sofía and White Columns, as well as in group exhibitions such as Querer parecer noche, CA2M; Arte y cultura en torno a 1992, CAAC; Ficciones y territorios, Museo Reina Sofía, and When Things Cast No Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art.

Publication

The Z Gallery (Z for zinema, cinema in Basque) programme aims to bring to the public authors interested in searching for new narrative forms by questioning the genres that historically categorise cinematographic language. 2021 season of the programme we want to highlight the interest and research deployed by their authors on the idea of the collective, as well as the ways in which to continue thinking and working together to project a shared future.