Juan Luis Moraza .- Tripalium
29/Sep/2023 - 29/Sep/2023
The second individual exhibition of JUAN LUIS MORAZA at the Espacio Minimo gallery, groups his last two series of work, Tripalium, which gives its name to the exhibition and the International Bank of Work Time.
TRIPALIUM:
The notion of “ABSOLUTE WORK” (title of his previous project in the gallery), which the artist has been articulating in his last exhibitions, is developed in the series that gives title to that new exhibition. “Tripalium” adopts the Roman origin of the word “work”: three sticks that hold each other, originally, to hold on to a convicted. According to the structural minimum of three points of contact to be maintained with maximum stability, and of collaboration between elements that support each other, that work evokes both the Baroque emblems, -composed by a figure and a title-, also related to currencies, “companies” and hieroglyphics…, like the Roman “trophies”, as a monumental accumulation of weapons captured to the enemy. These figures articulate different elements in emblematic combinations that recognize daily life in contemporary societies as modes of performance within a ubiquitous laboriousness. The elements fuse everyday objects, tools, utensils, with anthropomorphic and anthropometric evocations, in fluctuating scales.
INTERNATIONAL BANK OF WORK TIME:
Within the set of elaborations about “absolute work,” the International Bank of Work Time series is inserted, a graphic work edition which investigates the relationship between time and money. This is the issuance of bills designed to carry out time transactions, as a temporary contract that would compromise a certain period of work, from 0:001 seconds, to 5,000,000 hours. Issued by an INTERNATIONAL BANK OF TIME, they retain national languages to allow for cultural and personal involvement. The iconography of these editions includes many elements of the careful designs of real banknotes (from numerous countries and entities, both tax havens or international entities), but transformed and implemented with all kind other new elements, and with new emblematic characters of the economy, politics and culture. Thus, each banknote is an emblematic singularity, within the edition as a whole. Against the “Time is Money” that inaugurated the culture of capitalism, here you explicitly warn: “My Money is your Time”.
JUAN LUIS MORAZA (Vitoria/Gasteiz 1960). Sculptor. He is teacher at Vigo University and is showing exhibitions since 1980, including the one in Reina Sofia Museum, entitled “republic” (2014) and already in Artium Museum of Vitoria ‘Gordailua 1987-1988 Depósito’ (2020). His work is part of prestigious collections, both public (Guggenheim, Reina Sofia, Artium, MACBA, CA2M, etc.), and private (Helga de Alvear, Rona Hoffman, Dona & Howard Stone, Coca-Cola Foundation, La Caixa, etc.). He has curated numerous exhibitions, as El retorno de lo imaginario (Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010), Incógnitas. (Guggenheim Bilbao, 2007), etc.. And he has published several books as Corduras (2007), Ornamento y Ley (2007), Las formas del límite (2006), etc; and numerous magazine articles and collaboration books.
