NO, GLOBAL TOUR: Santiago Sierra in ARTIUM

Vitoria-Gasteiz: Artist Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 1966),[1] who recently rejected the National Plastic Arts Prize, will present NO, Global Tour on February 26 at the Lower East Gallery of ARTIUM.

The exhibition, which reflects upon power structures, is a symbolic journey into the First World. A sculpture formed by a quite big NO travels on top of the platform of a truck around financial districts, industrial zones, workers’ neighborhoods, and emblematic buildings of Europe, U.S. and Canada. It includes original sculptures and a series of pictures related with the tour, as well the marble-made “NO” created for the Carrara International Sculpture Biennial of 2010, and the international premiere of the film No, Global Tour.

ARTIUM’s exhibition program opened this year with the collective exhibition Medianoche en la ciudad (Midnight in the city) in the North Gallery. The display, co-produced with the Centre d’art La Panera de Lleida and organized by Jose Miguel G. Cortes, will be showcased until March 27. Fotoperiodismo: la realidad captada por el objetivo (Photojournalism: the reality captured by the target), consisting of a collection of books, documents and movies from the Library of the museum-center depicting the evolution of the genre in the 20th century will be open through April 11.

On Friday April 21, the Video(S)torias exhibition will be unveiled in the north Hall.  , The display traces the history of Spanish video art of the last forty years taking four conceptual lines as starting point: tekné(s), hybrid(s), policy(s), and subject(s). It offers four trajectories marked on the floor making up a map of the current metropolis including stops before each of the pieces on display. This configuration allows the viewer to choose any of the four possible itineraries, change routes or take all of them. Thus the exhibition suggests the idea of a trip along some of the most relevant vide art works of the history of the art in Spain. Video(S)torias is a coproduction by Arts Santa Monica from Barcelona and ARTIUM.

Angel Marcos’s project titled Planificación y estrategia (Rabos de lagartijas) (Planning and Strategy (Wall Lizard’s Tails)) will be open to the public May 21 in the Lower East Gallery. Within the usual conceptual space of Marcos’ work, the exhibition will take different trends and perspectives resulting in a series of photos, videos and very localized objects that invite viewers to look around, again, the world in which people interact with each other.

The exhibition En cuatro movimientos (In Four Movements), by National Plastic Arts Prize 2008 winner Esther Ferrer, from Guipuzcoa, will be available in the North Gallery from October 8. The display focuses on four concepts: time, the infinite, repetition and presence. Each of these ideas is developed through three types of work of art: one of them of object character (photos, paintings or artistic objects); an installation that will be made specifically in the galleries of the museum, some unpublished; and finally, a performance (represented in drawings, pictures and documentary films). The exhibition, curated by Rosa Olivares, allows viewers to come closer to Esther Ferrer’s work in all of its dimensions from 12 pieces that condense the most important topics the artist has target throughout her career. The exposition is a coproduction by ARTIUM and the State Society of Cultural Action (SEAC), with the collaboration of Montehermoso Cultural Center which will host a workshop on performance.

The annual presentation of the ARTIUM Collection that will feature in 2011, for the first time, the participation of curators who are not with the museum-center, titled situados, will be organized by Santi Eraso, Mar Villaespesa and BNV Producciones. The project will include, together with a selection of works, the direct participation of the artists that made them, for the discussion of different topics such as authorship and authority, originality, women’s discourse, art language and the function of the art institution or museum.

On the other hand, Praxis’ program continues year-round with a periodicity of about two months per project, and a series of –Basque, national and international– artists. In north Hall, Robert Waters’s project Uncover-Recover about historical memories will close on March 4; while on August 28 Basado en hechos reales (Based on Real Events) wraps up in south Hall, a story that moves from reality to fiction and presents the artist as a storyteller, a wise man and narrator of myths increasingly getting away from self-satisfaction. The display recalls myths as a tool articulating infinite stories, and dystopia as the image of fantasies’ disillusion and utopian projects from the past in our present.

Further information: ARTIUM. Basque Museum-Center of Contemporary Art

Francia 24, 01002 Vitoria-Gasteiz

www.artium.org / museo@artium.org