Transformando lo físico

  • Visual arts
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Wed, Apr 14, 2021 —
    Thu, Apr 14, 2022
Transformando lo físico

“Transformando lo Físico” invites 12 Spanish creators to come up with 12 different artistic proposals for the façade of our building that will be shown monthly in the garden, allowing a dialog between the building and its representation.

The security measures derived from the pandemic have forced us to rethink spaces, experiences and relationships, not only between people but also between people and space. Access to culture and the artistic experience itself now require new scenarios and approaches.

Although virtual reality is not a new phenomenon, in the current context its prominence is inevitable. We have transferred many of our physical and everyday experiences to the screen, and access to knowledge and culture has also been relocated to the virtual environment.

How can you describe a building without ever having seen it, without having walked through its doors?

Transforming the Physical Environment has asked twelve Spanish creators to define our building without visiting it first, at least not in the traditional sense. To do this, the artists will work on the intervention of a photograph of the façade of the building which will be placed in the garden.

The sensitive experience will be replaced by research and the possibility of generating intuitive knowledge, interpreting the architecture with values that go beyond form and extend to narrative or historical approaches or the relationship/interference with the environment.

Spectators will complete this project through active contemplation, where the layout of the piece shall allow the image and the façade to be observed simultaneously while also encouraging the viewer to look for differences and games between what can be seen in situ and the reading made by the artist. The piece is not a fixed composition, but a dialog between the real thing and its representation.

The selected artists are looking for radically different gazes and working environments: (Hybrid) approaches from the visual arts, design, drawing, architecture or mediation. However, a certain common ingredient can be seen in all of them: a playful and curious spirit that places the attention on processes and relates to everyday materials; a sensitive, warm and affectionate approach; one that is kind, even domestic. Whether it is in a more evident or more veiled way, all of them show an interest in space, understood from the architectural or the narrative point of view, from the traditional limits of representation, or from the relationship with the city and the environment.

HEY Studio, Iñaki Chávarri, E1000, Luis Úrculo, Tamara Arroyo, José Ramón Ais, Colectivo JÁ!, José Quintanar, Yolanda Mosquera, Javier Jaén, Susana Blasco and María Jérez have come up with twelve different answers to the same question, constructing a multi-faceted and multi-linear narrative of our building, in which the distinctive profile of its walls is completed with the forms that have shaped its history and its uses.

—Ana Bustelo, curator

Selected artists

Each month Transformando Lo Físico will present an artistic proposal by the following artists:

Venue

Venue map

Former Residence of the Ambassadors of Spain, 2801 16th St NW, Washington, DC 20009

Admission

Free

More information

Transformando lo físico

Credits

Presented by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C. and curated by Ana Bustelo

Tools

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