26th April 2024
Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma presents “I Am a Palace / I Am a Stable”, an exhibition of new work by Ana Laura Aláez that, designed around the structural characteristics of the exhibition space, proposes a reflection on emptiness as a sculptural material by means of five works: a photograph and four sculptures accompanied by texts written by the artist herself, based on what she experienced during the creation of each piece.
Curated by Frederic Montornés, the exhibition, as a whole, also reveals multiple references to the pulse of a way of thinking that, like Aláez’s, debates between the atavistic and the ancestral, the telluric and the epidermal, the public and the private, etc. “I Am a Palace / I Am a Stable” does not attempt to make Ana Laura Aláez’s artistic path visible. Consequently, it is not a retrospective exhibition but an experimental project. What this exhibition explores is a direction: that in which Aláez has been heading since her arrival in Mallorca. The works that reflect this path, while made to be explored and observed from different points of view, reveal the echo of a personal experience through other forms of representation.
From a sculptural perspective, there are several aspects of this exhibition that are worth highlighting:
- the dialogue that is established between antagonistic materials such as esparto and iron
- the links between drawing and sculpture
- the consideration of the human body as a carrier or as a living support for sculpture
- the reciprocal dependence between matter and emptiness
- metaphors as an artistic and poetic driving force
- the impact of the sculptural process as a rite of passage
“I Am a Palace / I Am a Stable” consists of a series of interconnected forms that only exist when they are assembled, seeing as the elements that make them up need to be linked in order to support each other. A series of structures without beginning or end, with the capacity of being multiplied throughout the exhibition space as many times as the artist sees fit.
Frederic Montornés, curator of the exhibition, explains in his text for the programme that when the artist first set foot in Es Baluard Museu’s Exhibition Hall B, she felt the need to recover the spatiality of her previous installation projects, which she designed with great precision, to then translate them into organic forms capable of reflecting the same kind of intensity. Montornés goes on to say that “what this space provoked in Aláez was the need to modify its volume through the contribution of opposite and complementary qualities such us concave/convex, empty/full, presence/absence, shelter/exposure and so on”.
It is worth noting that the mounting process of this exhibition has been fundamental for the activation of each of the five pieces. Work has been carried out in the museum as if it were a studio.
In Ana Laura Aláez’s own words: “I have worked on a reticular work that stems from a biographical story that begins to articulate itself based on the smallest and most insignificant things. This exhibition, although it has a sculptural format, is a chronicle of the imperfect life that any of us share, which lacks grand narratives and which never ends up being complete.”
David Barro, director of Es Baluard Museu, points out that “Ana Laura Aláez is a key artist for understanding the history of art in Spain in recent decades. Rigorous and persevering, she has not abandoned herself to a cliché because she continuously questions the world around her. As can be seen in Es Baluard, this type of constant reflection leads to works capable of combining contrary sensations and of cultivating differences; works that are extremely beautiful, but also raw, powerful and fragile in their way of working with emptiness as a material. The whole exhibition is a sculptural and performative gesture that envelops other gestures, encouraging the visitor to be in constant movement.”
Ana Laura Aláez (Bilbao, 1964) is a multidisciplinary artist. In her early works, she revisits questions posed by artists of a previous generation, particularly these associated with the New Basque Sculpture. Today, she is interested in incorporating elements that address gender perspectives, as well as utilizing materials and procedural strategies that diverge from the more orthodox sculptural tradition. Aláez views all her work, especially her three-dimensional work, as if they were part of an epistolary dialogue with other influential artists.
Among her solo exhibitions, those held at CA2M (2019); Azkuna Zentroa (2021); Towada Art Center, Towada City, Japan, (2008); MUSAC, León; Museo Banco de la República de Bogotá (2006); Centro Cultural de España, Mexico (2004); Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki (2004); Spanish Pavilion at the 49. ª Biennale di Venezia (2001); MNCARS, Madrid (2000).
She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at Oku-Noto Triennale, Suzu, Japan (2023); Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao (2007); The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2005); Podewil Center of Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2004); PS1, MOMA, New York (2003).
