Elena Blasco .- Teviasé unosapatito delala de mi sombrero
28/Jan/2023 - 18/Mar/2023
Teviasé unosapatito delala de mi sombrero, is the first solo exhibition at Espacio Mínimo gallery by ELENA BLASCO, an artist with a deep and extensive professional career that began in the 1970s.
The exhibition consists of a unified set of both large and small-format works on paper, complemented by works using different techniques. As is customary with Blasco’s work, the exhibition features a brilliant array of colours, a variety of techniques and textures, and a mixture of elements of high and low culture, through which she presents her recognisable and highly personal imagery. Beneath her sharp, insightful humour and false naivety, she explores major issues, such as social injustices and gender violence. The casual and irreverent air in her creations, both tactile and visual, camouflages the radical content of her work, where she questions canonical clichés and prejudices in today’s society. Her work presents a powerful exercise in conceptual, thematic and formal freedom that she has been developing since the start of her career, positioning her as one of the most unique and unclassifiable artists in contemporary sculpture.
About the exhibition, made up entirely of works created for the occasion, the artist writes the following:
When I exhibit my work, it seems like an offering to me. I go around the entire exhibition, standing upright, with two huge hands open and wide, looking at the sky like those offering Iberian ladies. It’s also like when my cat catches a mole and brings it to my feet. In fact, my first work was called “Todo se me hace poco para ti” (Everything seems to me little for you) and I continued like that.
And this is called: “Teviasé unosapatito delala de mi sombrero” (I’m going to make you some little shoes from the brim of my hat)
Another unfeasible promise, from Camarón de La Isla, by the way. From the brim of my hat I couldn’t make a single whole shoe, it’s “almost impossible” that I made a pair for each of you… but hey, it’s the intention, it’s a desire, to fit all of you.
There is no project. But, the material. I found a tracing paper that must have been around for years. The material dictates the tone in which what you work on it, and this one was delicate, translucent and resistant at the same time.
I made around forty small drawings in one go, very comfortably, until the tracing paper ran out, and I stopped because some of the drawings began to grow on a Korean paper and become long, like us. Others hardened into wall or floor ceramics, or multiplied and emerged as first cousins, that is, with some common “family” traits here and there. Others became very tight wool, like carpets, well rounded… or crazy, with a vocation for tapestry. Finally, some folded into billowing curtains and even transformed into rubber.
There is no story. There isn’t this or that, it is a great, growing family… they get along well, and more will come. I will end up being surrounded by moles and cats.
The ball I threw while playing in the park… has not yet reached the ground. (Dylan Thomas)
This is the most I want to say about art, best not to “shake it”. Best to work and go
ELENA BLASCO (Madrid, 1950), graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid with a specialty in Painting and also gained a diploma in Photography and Design from the School of Plastic Arts of Madrid.
Since 1976, the year of her first solo exhibition, she has exhibited her recognizable and original works in solo projects in Spanish and international galleries, and in museums and institutions such as the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem in the Netherlands (1992), Espacio Caja de Burgos (2001), Sala Alameda of the Provincial Council of Málaga (2002) or Sala Alcalá 31 of the Community of Madrid (Millions and abundant reasons, curated by Alicia Murría in 2012) and in group shows such as the II Ibero-American Drawing Biennial (Mexico City, 1980), VI Salón de los 16 (Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, 1986), Rencontres européennes (Maison des Arts Georges Pompidou, Cajarc, France, 1993), Multiple (Jacobo Borges Museum, Venezuela, 1997), Women: Manifests of a very subtle nature (Exhibition Hall of the Community of Madrid, 2000), Domestico 2000 (Madrid, 2000), Four Dimensions. Sculpture in Spain 1978-2003 (Patio Herreriano Museum, Valladolid, 2003) and El Hecho Alegre (La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2019).
Her work is represented in museums and collections such as the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum in Madrid, the Albertina Collection in Vienna, La Caixa Foundation Collection in Barcelona, ARTIUM Museum in Vitoria, Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid, the National Library in Madrid, Coca-Cola Foundation Spain, Altadis Collection, Madrid/Paris and the Sculpture Museum of Pamplona among others.
