Miguel Ángel Gaüeca .- Setting the Record Straight (Dejando Constancia de la medida correcta)
14/Sep/2017 - 28/Oct/2017
Espacio Mínimo inaugurates the season in its renovated exhibition space with a new project by MIGUEL ÁNGEL GAÜECA, his sixth solo show for the gallery, Setting the Record Straight, in which the artist presents a collaboration with Royal Factory of Glass and Crystal of La Granja.
Is better for us to think that we live in an orderly and measurable environment, in which we seek to generate formulas to catch everything that should be inasible. So if we ask ourselves if this mode of operation conditions spaces such as artistic production, the only thing we can do is to assent to verify that, just as our way of inserting ourselves in society is limited, the artistic experiences are restricted.
MIGUEL ÁNGEL GAÜECA retakes the art world as an exemplifying space for our social interaction models. To this end, he constructs a pattern to question the multiple measurement systems – symbolic capital, economic, hierarchical orders, principles of value … – confronting us with our role as agents of this network.
If we consider a brief tour of the modes of organization, and therefore of measuring and control, we must begin with the education and training systems. The artist himself reminds one of his professors, Xabier Sáenz de Gorbea, offering the students with an ironic tone the “recipe” to offer a contemporary piece of success: “33% pop + 33% conceptual + 33% minimal“. This primitive formula already evidences the existence of a small fault, one percent uncontrollable.
The history of art, referred to on many occasions by GAÜECA, offers us examples in which the idea of measurement is questionable. One of the most paradigmatic examples is found in Marcel Duchamp, who influenced by the mathematical theory of Henri Poincaré, questions the meter as a standard measurement standard creating three measurement rules constructed from the form that three thread of one meter adopt when falling to the ground launched always from a same height – 3 stoppages étalon, 1913-4-.
This background serves the artist to introduce the Jug series, in which presents us a serie of test jars in which the items of measurement refer to different streams or artistic constants.
The jar itself links with one of the recurring concerns in the work of MIGUEL ÁNGEL GAÜECA, how do our everyday objects enunciate structures of power? An instrument such as a pitcher is intended to “serve”, but who decides the extent of what is served and how? The act of serving, in this case, is problematized by identifying the person holding the handle of this object.
The other question about the hegemony of the art’s patterns refers to both the material and the idea of design or “utilitas”. Gaüeca’s work has often questioned the “ideological” component of the material, evidencing how our current art system continues to give preference to material hegemony such as, for example, bronze versus clay. In this scale, the artist incorporates the glass, linked to the “decorative arts” or “minor arts” and to the ideal of “transparency” that has built many of the myths of the contemporary. This idea is emphasized by the use of known forms, jug, test tube, and by the importance given to typography, one of the milestones of the advance of design in modernity.
Playing with the multiple combinatories of the order of terms, as of typographies, the work emphasizes the relativism in systems of measurement that, even in an unconscious way – canon, market value, signature, status, … – we project in the artistic work. The infinity of possibilities is confronted with the rigidity of the dictates of art and its agents.
If in other works of the artist we found easily the agent, cause he focused on the role of the artist as an example of the role of the individual in our hypercapitalist society, Jugs forces us to decide by ourselves who is the figure of power / service that decides to fill those jars and offer us their content.
MIGUEL ÁNGEL GAÜECA (Bilbao, 1967). Bachelor of Fine Arts by the Basque Country University in the specialty of sculpture. He has exhibited individually or collectively, among others, at the Reina Sofia National Art Museum, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Santa Monica Art Center, Mücsarnok Kunstalle in Budapest, Berlin Academy of Arts, M.A.R.C.O. of Vigo, Fundación Colectania of Barcelona, ARTIUM of Alava, Australian Center for Photography, March Foundation of Palma de Mallorca, M.U.S.A.C. of Leon, Braga Image Museum, MEIAC of Badajoz, San Telmo Museum of San Sebastian or the DA2 of Salamanca, has also participated in numerous art fairs such as ARCO, SUMMA, MACO Foto, PINTA, VOLTA, ArtBo, Lima Ph Lima Photo, Art Taipei, FOROSUR, Frieze Art Fair, Art Bassel Miami, Art Chicago or The Gramercy Contemporary International Art Fair. His work is present in collections such as Dos de Mayo Art Museum, Reina Sofia National Art Museum, Coca Cola Foundation, Aragonese Institute of Contemporary Art, Pilar Citoler Collection, Fundación BilbaoArte, ARTIUM of Alava, Purificación García Collection, City Council of Alcobendas or Ministry of Social Affairs among others. It is represented exclusively by the Espacio Mínimo Gallery of Madrid.
