Bene Bergado .- Hom@
09/Apr/2010 - 22/May/2010
Hom@ is BENE BERGADO’s fourth exhibition at Espacio Minimo Gallery and is made up of five sculptural works with which the artist continues the work process she has been developing in the recent years.
The museum taxonomies (from the Greek ταξις, taxis “ordering”, and νομος, nomos, “norm” or “rule”) understood as a system of classification with arbitrary conventions, are used by the artist to organize a series of bodies and open structures that include skeletons, cages, utensils, fragments of home interiors etc.
The titles of three of the works in the exhibition make reference to three different types of “homo”: Homo Sentimentalis, Homo Capitalensis and Homo Sostenibilis. These are three of the many possible types of that could exist in a hypothetical museum of contemporary human beings.
The work titled Homo Sentimentalis is based on the skeleton of a Goliath frog (the largest from in the world) up-scaled to a human dimension. It carries a crown which is a golden bronze cage, based on an earlier work from 2002.
The work Homo Capitalensis is created from the thorax of a human skeleton melted into a hard pool with one of its shoulder blades sticking out of its spine, creating thus a the shape of a shark fin.
Utensilios de Homo Sostenibilis is a work made up of a group of laquered bronze plates. Mirroring the visual style of traditional golden decorative friezes, these carry inscriptions of international symbols for toxic, radioactive and biological hazards. Each plate has bite marks where parts are missing. For it part Cabeza de Homo Sostenibilis seems materially similar to the previous work yet we find that inside, instead of bronze, we find it has been crafted with recycled plastic residues.
The last works in the exhibition are Casa de Fieras and the first work in her new series Habitats Naturales which kicks off a new body of work. The work shows a section from a real home where the skeletal remains of a small humanoid being lie near a sealed trapdoor. The title makes reference to the 19th Century name for what are now our zoos.
The starting points for each of these works are very different to each other. They emerge from desires, personal and formal interests. Many of the works have a slow production process which gices them time to contaminate each other.
The museum system of clasification allows the artists to give the group of works a sense of order and reasoning.
BENE BERGADO (Salamanca, 1963), graduated in Fine Art at Universidad del País Vasco. In 1987 she was awarded the Artistic Creation Scholarship form Diputación Foral de Vizcaya and she was Professor at the Fine Art Department of the Universidad del País Vasco from 1987 to 1997. She currently live and works in Madrid.
