Cristina Lucas: “Es Capital” at Abierto x Obras // Matadero Madrid

Since February 1 and until May 11, 2014, Cristina Lucas (Jaén, 1973) will be facing the old cold store of Legazpi abattoir with a specific context work that analyzes some of the main mysteries, paradoxes and challenges of the current capitalist system. Intervention Es Capital, curated by Manuela Villa, is made up of four new-creation works carried out in collaboration with Spanish Cultural Action (AC/E), Patio Herreriano Museum of Valladolid and Santiago de Compostela’s Galician Center of Contemporary Art, with the support of DKV. This show has counted on the invaluable collaboration of 68 entities and interviewees.

Surplus Value (Plusvalia), the first of four pieces, documents the research developed by the artist to know the current price of manuscript El Capital, written by Karl Marx in the late 19^th century, which represents one of the most influential economic policy treaties of our time. Marx popularizes the term surplus value, by defining it as the profit obtained by the capitalist out of the workforce: "there would be no capitalist society without this benefit ", he asserts.

The relation between usage value and exchange value in a society ruled by financial capitalism is also reflected in the base of Gold Mountain (Montaña de oro), two pictures of the amount of gold stored in the Reserve of Spain’s Bank. Let’s remember that, while the gold pattern system prevailed, this precious metal set the value of a country’s monetary unit.

The series of interviews Philosophic Capitalism (Capitalismo filosofico) is a search to understand the relation between philosophic concepts applied by companies to do business and their market activity. What’s the meaning of Death for a funeral parlor? What does Beauty entails for a plastic surgery clinic? What’s Truth for a notary’s office?

In The Common Super-Good (El superbien comun), the artist goes deep into one of the main paradoxes of the capitalist system: the lack of resources and the incapacity of our planet to generate enough wealth, if every single inhabitant seeks a lifestyle based on the unlimited consumption of goods and services.

Es Capital can be watched at Abierto x Obras in Matadero Madrid, February 1 – May 11, in summer time 2014 at Valladolid’s Patio Herreriano Museum and Santiago de Compostela’s Galician Center of Contemporary Art in autumn.

Abierto x Obras

Abierto x Obras, Matadero Madrid, is a program of site specific interventions that fosters the experimental character of creation by means of approaches the explore the relation between art and the place that houses it, the old cold store of Matadero. Since 2007 Abierto x Obras has hosted interventions by artists like Daniel Canogar, Jannis Kounnellis, Roman Signer, Carlos Garaicoa, Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Jordi Colomer or Los Carpinteros, among others. The next interventions in Abierto x Obras are going to be carried out by Spanish artist Sara Ramo and German Bjorn Dahlem.

OPENING: Friday January 31^st, 2000 hours. Free admittance