Urban? art at ARCO 06 Art Fair
According to a press sheet from the ARCO Art Fair organization in Madrid “Graffiti and other urban creations that usually stay on the outside of the mainstream comtemporay art circuits, reach inside ARCO this year”. This, along with the repercussion in the local press and TV about the presence of urban art in ARCO this year had created quite some expectation. In fact a whole section “On Youth Culture”, was supposedly dedicated to this field of artistic expressions. Besides the presence of some artists 3 conferences were celebrated with people like artist Ryan McGinness, one of the curators of the Beautiful Losers show (among a few other things): Aaron Rose and the directors from magazines Made or Giant Robot among some others. Truth is I couldn’t assist and all I’ve heard is that it looked quite like a bunch of friends talking about their things, mostly marketing, branding and so on and not so much art. Nothing wrong with that, anyways. Maybe a little too restrictive its admission policy: 45€ each one of the 3 discussions that were held precisely last wednesday, a day when only people with a professional pass could enter the fair.
Although it’s a good iniciative in the right direction I’ve found it frankly disappointing after all the buzz. It’s a pity that only one international artist with an actual background in Graffiti or any other form of art in the streets finally participated: Barry McGee aka Twist (I mean, besides Basquiat or Keith Haring pieces here and there).
Also, the rest of the artists that were mentioned in the press note were either scattered between different gallery stands or were simply artists that don’t have much to do with the whole urban art phenomenon. I guess that’s good if it’s a sign of normalization that the street artists participate in these kind of fairs on their own right and therefore have their work exhibited along other artists work in different stands from galleries both national and international. But the fact is that local artists El tono & Nuria and Nano4814, the only other artists of this kind, besides McGee that have shown their work in ARCO 06 were going to be there anyways, same as they were last year represented by their galleries (Vacio 9 for El Tono & Nuria and Ad Hoc for Nano4814) and not precisely because the null interest of the curators of the “On Youth Culture” program, Peter Doroschenko and Pedro Alonzo, in taking a look at what local street artists were doing and incorporating them to the program. In any case, for anyone who is attending ARCO these days and is interested in taking a look at the presence of Urban Art in the fair this year is really going to be quite hard, unless you know exactly the names of the artists, to find out where all this urban art is.
Barry McGee
Barry McGee aka Twist is witouth any doubt, one of the most representative and succesful artists to make a trasaction from the street to the mainstream art world. His installation in ARCO 06 (stand of London Gallery Modern Art) shows a clear continuity with his latest shows (Deitch Gallery, Rose Art Museum…) and it’s a collage of many small paintings along a wooden figure with a spraycan that seems to the the author of a huge tagged sentence above all the installation: “Smash the State” .
Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Besides the McGee installation there is a similar one, also composed of many small paintings by Clare E. Rojas and in the stand right next to it (Roberts & Tilton gallery) a bigger, intense and very impressive installation with both paintings and many photographs by Ed Templeton.
Clare E. Rojas
Ed Templeton
It’s nice to see the work of these very talented artists or others like Ryan McGinness (Galería Moriarty’s stand) that althought not really street artists or Graffiti writers, belong to a similar cultural background and generation as McGee or other artists that, we would have wished to see in ARCO too. Maybe the only problem, besides the lack of atention to local artists within the “On Youth Culture” program, has not been the selection of artists but instead the way ARCO has marketed this initiative in the press labelling the whole thing like “Big news!: Graffiti and urban art in ARCO this year!!”
Nano4814
El tono & Nuria (Pic: Tono)
Fortunately 2 pieces, one by El tono and Nuria and another by Nano4814 show the healthy estate of things with local street artists. In both cases they have chosen to paint directly on their gallery stands walls. Other pieces are for sale, although not for show, in ARCO through these galleries. But once ARCO closes next monday Feb. 13th these pieces will be destroyed. I guess it’s all about the ephimeral aspect of art in the streets. Let’s just hope that this disappointing initiative of bringing some street artists to ARCO is not ephimeral as well and instead keeps improving and increasing the number of artists in the upcoming editions.
February 10th, 2006 01:24pm Administrador
