Generación 2012: anonimato y memoria
By ABEL H. POZUELO
El Cultural de El MUndo.Print edition.8/3/2012
March 9, 2012
La Casa Encendida.Ronda de Valencia,2.Madrid.Until 8 April.
Surely it is a consequence of the economic morass (only?), But lately the project with which Caja Madrid wants to support «young art and new talent» seems to have been approaching the safe value. The names and résumés of the winners in this edition are almost overwhelming here. The set selected is somewhat uneven in terms of plastic power, although they are all firm works from the point of view of content and created by artists where a deep conceptual work stands out.
The work with materials and techniques is also interesting, although it is not very unusual: the victory of the mixed and the hybrid detected in the middle of the last decade continues to be fought against the historical disciplines. Painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video or action have disappeared in the strict sense and these ten artists (between 1976 and 1984) deliver specific assemblies and tasks in process, adopting the condition of installations.
Something typical of this annual event is that it facilitates detecting some common signs of identity. On this occasion, in addition to this triumph of the conceptual, the unfinished and the mutant, two notable and booming formal tendencies appear, such as the use of lighting and sound as material. Above all, it is worth noting the value of the anonymous, both in the theme and source of reflection for art, and in inspiration for the reproduction of new forms or the translation of the old ones into the new social context. This is present in the remains of victims of the hate gear buried in the common grave of Toro (Paula Rubio Infante); in the same powder that Kristoffer Ardeña fixes with spray to his ironic mini-copies of paintings by Ellsworth Kelly; the materials almost from walking around the house of the sculptural assemblies of Nuria Fuster; the anonymous individuals of a group photograph that gives meaning and symbolizes a historical moment (Daniel Silvo); in the urban context so mundane that it serves as a royal decoration to the audiovisual theater of Maya Watanabe; in the unknown «bearers» of art in his skin and the same exchange of leather for art in the tattooed drawings of Almudena Lobera and Isabel Martínez Abascal; in the overwhelming simplicity of the simulation of the passing of hours in a house represented by Amaya Hernández; in the object of scientific analysis that in turn studies art (Empar Buxeda); and even in the popular assimilation of the history of architecture and pop subculture by the collective imaginary (Javier Fresneda) or in the critical study of the resignification of the common landscape as a justification of the established power of Juanli Carrión. There is not enough space to explain it, but it is linked (as if they were the helices of the DNA code) to an instigation to remember, memory as an intimate friend to whom to trust the present and History (social, aesthetic) as a construction, very often interested in the current status quo. Another good batch, dynamic sensitivity. The works of Hernández and Rubio Infante stand out, followed by those of Carrión and Ardeña.
