curated by Lucas Cuturi
Opening on the 26th of February
Duration: 26.02. – 03.04.2016
CreArt Valladolid: Inauguración de la Exposición” CREADORES: ABISMO HUMANO” el 26 de Febrero
SME FrancesasLa cuarta muestra colectiva CREADORES, organizada con motivo de la celebración del Día Europeo de la Creatividad Artística, está comisariada en esta nueva edición por el austriaco Lucas Cuturi, encargado de la Exposición CreArt 2015 “The City and me”, y cuenta con la participación de los 7 artistas vallisoletanos presentes hasta ahora en las diferentes muestras europeas de CreArt desde 2013: Amaya Bombín, David del Bosque, Julio Falagán, Eduardo Hurtado, Belén Rodríguez, Patricia Sandonis, y Germán Sinova
El proyecto expositivo titulado “abismo humano” mostrará los enfoques diferentes de estos 7 artistas locales hacia el lado oscuro de la humanidad. Por un lado se discutirán las formas de abismo del individuo, y por otro lado, se ocuparán de los problemas de la sociedad actual y los efectos causados por el arbitraje político. Además se pondrán en discusión tragedias históricas que se remontan a la época de la segunda guerra mundial. El análisis del caos y el orden será parte también del debate.In the history of fine arts, artists have always been dealing with the abyss of humanity, primarily depicting scenes of violence. Since ancient times, both sacral motifs like the illustration of tales of gods and heros from the Greek and Roman mythology as well as profane depictions were dealing with victorious battles and conquest. When in the medieval times the christian religion found its way into the world of fine arts, many violent themes of the Old and New Testament were added to the artistic repertoire providing on one side the uneducated crowd with information and on the other side serving the institutional church by intimidating them. During the renaissance and the baroque period artworks depicting violence were mainly used for narrativ, illustrativ and decorative purposes and served primarily as altarpieces for admiration. Only in the recent and contemporary art history the examination with violence emerged out of ethic-didactic considerations, reflection or sociocritical reasons.During the Roman Empire depicting violent actions were mostly serving to glorify the actions of a commander or an emperor like the reliefs on the famous Trajan’s column (113 AD) showing Trajan’s campaigns and conquests which he did for the good of Rome. In the Middle Ages depictions of violence were mostly used to frighten humans by threatening them with various forms of punishment after death like purgatory and eternal damnation. One artist being very famous for illustrating the spirit of medevial times was the Dutch born Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). In many of his paintings he shows with a certain love for detail very impressively how these punishment could look like. As one of the first artists, the Italian paintress Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) used painting to process a traumatic experience namely her firsthand abuse. Referring to the story of Judith and Holofernes from the Old Testament, she depicted her rapist as Holofernes whom she personified as Judith provided with the rightful punishment. As a consequence more and more artworks arose dealing with the fears and sufferings of the human being. One very large-sized example for this is the painting “The Raft of the Medusa” from the famous French romanticist Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). Its presentation at the Paris Salon 1819 caused a lot of rumor as the painting was, besides its expressivity, referring to a political scandal in 1816. Another painting that is not at all less impressive is the painting titled “La Guernica” by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) dealing with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War 1937. Also both photographers, the American born Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and the Hungarian born Ropert Capa (1913-1954), who was one of the founding members of the famous “MAGNUM Photos” agency, are showing extreme poverty up to the horrors of war in their pictures. Unfortunately the topic of violence is still one of the main subjects of the international news coverage providing curious consumers with all kind of terrifying formats while themselves sitting in their cosy homes. Sadly enough, most of the people do not really care about this tragedies of human abyss anymore, however what is even worse is the existence of a special sort of crowd glorifying violence and thinking of it as something positive. In the German language there even exists a word that describes these kind of people so called “Gewaltverherrlicher”.The reason why I chose this topic for the exhibition is the sad fact that any form of violence has nowadays become a widley passive tolerated phemomenon. All artists taking part in this exhibition fortunately show that not everyone has fallen in this lethargy by dealing with all kinds of violence in their artworks. Topics that are addressed by the artists are ranging from political abuse, the horrors of war, uprooting, firsthand experienced violence, up to the troubled inner conflict of individuals facing situations that they can not cope alone. In addition, the omnipresent media, which acts partialy biased and opinion-forming is examined carefully and scrutinized. It ranges from order to chaos – abyss of humanity.Text by Lucas Cuturi
El proyecto expositivo titulado “abismo humano” mostrará los enfoques diferentes de estos 7 artistas locales hacia el lado oscuro de la humanidad. Por un lado se discutirán las formas de abismo del individuo, y por otro lado, se ocuparán de los problemas de la sociedad actual y los efectos causados por el arbitraje político. Además se pondrán en discusión tragedias históricas que se remontan a la época de la segunda guerra mundial. El análisis del caos y el orden será parte también del debate.In the history of fine arts, artists have always been dealing with the abyss of humanity, primarily depicting scenes of violence. Since ancient times, both sacral motifs like the illustration of tales of gods and heros from the Greek and Roman mythology as well as profane depictions were dealing with victorious battles and conquest. When in the medieval times the christian religion found its way into the world of fine arts, many violent themes of the Old and New Testament were added to the artistic repertoire providing on one side the uneducated crowd with information and on the other side serving the institutional church by intimidating them. During the renaissance and the baroque period artworks depicting violence were mainly used for narrativ, illustrativ and decorative purposes and served primarily as altarpieces for admiration. Only in the recent and contemporary art history the examination with violence emerged out of ethic-didactic considerations, reflection or sociocritical reasons.During the Roman Empire depicting violent actions were mostly serving to glorify the actions of a commander or an emperor like the reliefs on the famous Trajan’s column (113 AD) showing Trajan’s campaigns and conquests which he did for the good of Rome. In the Middle Ages depictions of violence were mostly used to frighten humans by threatening them with various forms of punishment after death like purgatory and eternal damnation. One artist being very famous for illustrating the spirit of medevial times was the Dutch born Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). In many of his paintings he shows with a certain love for detail very impressively how these punishment could look like. As one of the first artists, the Italian paintress Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) used painting to process a traumatic experience namely her firsthand abuse. Referring to the story of Judith and Holofernes from the Old Testament, she depicted her rapist as Holofernes whom she personified as Judith provided with the rightful punishment. As a consequence more and more artworks arose dealing with the fears and sufferings of the human being. One very large-sized example for this is the painting “The Raft of the Medusa” from the famous French romanticist Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). Its presentation at the Paris Salon 1819 caused a lot of rumor as the painting was, besides its expressivity, referring to a political scandal in 1816. Another painting that is not at all less impressive is the painting titled “La Guernica” by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) dealing with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War 1937. Also both photographers, the American born Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and the Hungarian born Ropert Capa (1913-1954), who was one of the founding members of the famous “MAGNUM Photos” agency, are showing extreme poverty up to the horrors of war in their pictures. Unfortunately the topic of violence is still one of the main subjects of the international news coverage providing curious consumers with all kind of terrifying formats while themselves sitting in their cosy homes. Sadly enough, most of the people do not really care about this tragedies of human abyss anymore, however what is even worse is the existence of a special sort of crowd glorifying violence and thinking of it as something positive. In the German language there even exists a word that describes these kind of people so called “Gewaltverherrlicher”.The reason why I chose this topic for the exhibition is the sad fact that any form of violence has nowadays become a widley passive tolerated phemomenon. All artists taking part in this exhibition fortunately show that not everyone has fallen in this lethargy by dealing with all kinds of violence in their artworks. Topics that are addressed by the artists are ranging from political abuse, the horrors of war, uprooting, firsthand experienced violence, up to the troubled inner conflict of individuals facing situations that they can not cope alone. In addition, the omnipresent media, which acts partialy biased and opinion-forming is examined carefully and scrutinized. It ranges from order to chaos – abyss of humanity.Text by Lucas Cuturi
Press reactions:
http://www.laguiago.com/evento/valladolid/creadores-abismo-humano/
http://www.aquienvalladolid.com/eventos/creadores-abismo-humano-2016-02-28/
