Exposición

Marisa González,
The Factory

Inauguration:
May 23, 2000

Fundación Telefónica
Temporary Exhibit Room
Fuencarral 3

May 24
July 23

Book
Catalogue

Curator:
Menene Gras

With text by Roberto Velásquez, Menene Gras, Sonia Sheridan, Claudia Giannetti, Román Gubern, Alicia Murría and Fernando Castro. Also includes a conversation between Marisa González and the exhibit organizer, Menene Gras, plus other texts and materials on "the factory" and on the artist's career.

Color illustrations

Spanish
English

248 pages

Available

La Fundación Telefónica presents the latest work of Marisa Gonzalez, a pioneer of electronic art in Spain. A factory lying in ruins is the historic, symbolic and plastic argument behind Marisa Gonzalez's new project, considered to be an important step in her artistic career, both for its innovative use of digital technologies and its creation of an ambitious social metaphor rooted in collective memory.

The new work, presented within Photoespaña 2000, is produced by la Fundación Telefónica and opens tomorrow in its exhibit rooms in Madrid.

Digitalized and altered photographs (hyper-photographs), digital video and a variety of installations comprise this collection, organized by the specialist Menene Gras. This collection combines two things: one, the expressive discovery generated by the expert, yet daring use of the new media, and two, a careful, close-up view of a historical reality full of resonance on the economy, society and power in contemporary Spain. The exhibit reproduces the vacating and demolition of a real factory, resulting in a trip to our recent past, through our collective memory.

Experts concur that in this new proposal, Marisa Gonzalez, one of the pioneer artists in the field of electrographic art in Spain, shows the strength of her artistic development, with a clear line of continuity since the 1970's. It was at this time that she began to explore Generative Systems under the guidance of its founder Sonia Sheridan in Chicago, continuing to the present. Her artistic career has been based on permanent research and experimentation with new technological tools, while always at the service of content and not the inverse. This has enabled her to make important steps in her creative production, positioning it, as the critics believe, very prominently within the most innovative generation of Spanish art today.

NEW FORMS OF REPRESENTATION

In this project, for the first time in her lengthy career, Marisa Gonzalez deals with a theme based on architecture. Behind the argument of this exhibit there lies the real factory, a historic building, symbol of the industrial development of the region in which it was built. After a century in existence, it lost its functionality, due to its obsolete facilities and technology, or to any other factor of the market's economic development.

As the artist herself states, it was the immediacy of the demolition and the view of the interior and exterior of the ruins that created the emotional impulse to begin the project, one with a solid artistic foundation, and above all, carried out with a perspective to process, proper of her style of research. In The Factory one senses not only the desire to investigate new forms of representation (something which has characterized her work since the beginning), but also the will to adapt these forms to the content, which is given priority.

FOUR SPACES FOR ONE METAPHOR
The content of the exhibit is structured upon the story of the vacating and demolition of the various buildings composing the factory complex, in four times and spaces:
The section "Photography" includes digitally altered images of architectural themes: the outside of the factory, the inside of the building, artifacts and machinery.	The space titled "Lights" one finds an installation with lights and lamps from the factory. These project writing in light onto the floor. In the dark, on the far wall of the exhibit room one can see images of national family identification booklets left open, with the information on the factory workers. This is the dramatic conceptual representation of the mechanisms of power.
"Silo" is a removable piece, made from the inside of the factory. Inside it are remnants of the repair shops, layouts and various documents. The area is presided over by an actual clock rescued from the disaster area, marking time. The circular nature of the silo is identical to the clock of industrial time that denies individual time.	"Demolition" is a space that concludes the circuit of the exhibit. A video-installation, it is structured around the projection of three videos onto connected screens or walls. Sound and Image are perfectly synchronized. The theme comes from the artist's own record of the actual demolition of the factory. The intent is to represent the spectacle of its fall.

Biographical Notes on Marisa González Born in Bilbao, lives in Madrid Advanced degree in Piano from the Bilbao Conservatory. Receives her B.F.A. from the Madrid School of Fine Arts (1967-71). From 1971 to 1973 completes a Master degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the department of Generative Systems, a pioneering center in the research of Art and technology. Receives B.F.A. and graduation honors from the Corcoran School of Art in D.C. (1974-'76). In 1978 she establishes her residence in Madrid. Named by Sonia Sheridan "Network" in Spain for Generative Systems, in which she participates actively, from its inception and throughout its development. A pioneer in Electrography in Spain. Publishes articles, runs workshops, participates in conferences and seminars on New Technologies. Collaborates with Sonia Sheridan in the European presentation of the video-computer system called Lumena, with digital palette, at the Reina Sofía Center for Art in Madrid with the exhibit "Processes, Culture and New Technologies", 1986. She did her first artistic work with this systems' digital palette, presenting it and other electrographic pieces in this exhibit. She directed the workshop "Creation and Technology" at the Fine Arts Circle of Madrid, Current Art Workshops, in November of 1992. During the final closing week of this workshop she presented the concert-computer-workshop "Timescape", together with her special guests John Dunn, Sonia Sheridan and Jamy Sheridan. Together with the students of this workshop she created the installation "Fax Station", Madrid 1993. In Montreal Canada in 1995 she participated in the exhibit and lecture "What's happened to the pioneers?", together with Sonia Sheridan, in the field of Copigraphy at the Center for New Technologies, ISEA Convention (International Symposium on Electronic Art). In the Rekalde Room at the Bilbograph '95 exhibit she presented 20 sequences with 180 images of the series "Portraits", which were conceived and created by the Lumena video-computer system. At this exhibit she also created an interactive workshop and an international call for participation ("Fax Station"), with more than 10 countries and numerous artists taking part with the theme: "Individual Body, Social Body, Infected Body, Contaminated Body". In her extensive artistic activity she continues to research the new languages and technological tools that the society of communication has steadily incorporated into it as new means of expression. She has presented more than 35 individual exhibits and 90 collective exhibits, at international events in contemporary art such as ARCO, (Madrid), Fiac (Paris), and Koln (Cologne). Her work is recognized in the international circle of contemporary art and is found in museums and both public and private collections in Europe and America. Among them: Salvador Allende International Museum (Chile); Municipal Museum of Fine Arts (Santander, Spain); The Chase Manhattan Bank Collection, (New York); The Eusebio Sempere Center, Provincial Government of Alicante, Spain; The San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Madrid; Museum für Fotokopie Mulheim a.d., Ruhr, Germany; la Fundación Telefónica Collection, Spain; National Museum de la Poste, Quebec, Canada; Collection of the Regional Government of Extremadura, Spain; Fine Arts Museum of Álava, Spain; CGAC Galician Center for Contemporary Art (Spain); and MACBA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain.