Exhibition
09.12.2011 - 25.03.2012

Isidoro Valcárcel Medina. Constitución 1812

finished

Constitución 1812

MACBA will participate in the project curated by Jorge Díez 1812_2012. A Contemporary Vision. This initiative includes an extensive multidisciplinary programme of cultural activities from a range of different fields such as public art, illustration, contemporary and popular music, audiovisuals and the Internet. It will begin in December 2011 and continue throughout 2012.

Some highlights of the programme include the presentation of 17 ephemeral art interventions by Spanish contemporary artists, including Isidro Valcárcel Medina who will participate with his project Constitución 1812. These interventions, which are the central core of the project, will be exhibited simultaneously from the 5th to the 11th of December 2011, as part of the Spanish Constitution commemorations, and will remain in place for a longer or shorter time depending on the characteristics of each projects.
Two hundred years after the proclamation of of the 1812 Constitution, Valcárcel tackles the task of remembering that event. But how can a circumstance be displayed so long after it has occurred? The project aims to exercise the right to creating an intervention that is faithful in spirit, but startling in its appearance. Respectful and also demystifying. For this reason, the artist chooses the walls of the museum over the official state gazette, and handwriting over a printing press. In the end, the exercise could be encapsulated in the idea of those who are legislated playing at being those who legislate.

With the collaboration of:

dates

9 December 2011 – 25 March 2012

title

Isidoro Valcárcel Medina. Constitución 1812

dates

9 December 2011 – 25 March 2012

title

Isidoro Valcárcel Medina. Constitución 1812

artist

Isidoro Valcárcel Medina

Múrcia

1937

see detail

Born in Murcia, at the age of 19 Isidoro Valcárcel Medina moved to Madrid, where he studied Architecture and Fine Arts. Since the early 1960s, his experimental, transgressive and highly coherent art has positioned him as one of the key Spanish Conceptual artists. In 1968, during a stay in New York, he encountered Minimalism, which he fully incorporated into his work. Since then, he has created and developed situations, interventions, actions and projects that question the role and condition of the object and the art market. In the 1970s, he carried out often-large works in urban contexts, describing movements and spaces in the city, collecting data through surveys, public announcements, collective examinations, dictionaries, among other actions and resources. By the eighties, he embraced collective architecture, since when his work, close to philosophy, has evolved from objective proposals to full dematerialisation: in other words, prioritising attitude and gesture over the object. Among his many actions, as part of the exhibition MACBA Collection: Absorption and Theatricality, 2006, he painted for nine days, between 10 and 19 September, a white wall of the Museum using a number 8 watercolour brush.

He has exhibited in some of the leading spaces in Spain and has participated in exhibitions and collective events throughout Europe. Among his retrospectives, the most significant were those presented at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Sala de Verónicas, Múrcia; and Centro José Guerrero, Granada, 2002. Also of note is the documentary No escribiré arte con mayúscula, a compendium looking back over his career, made by the artist with Luis Deltell and Miguel Álvarez-Fernández and presented at the Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de Navarra Punto de Vista, 2015. His work is part of collections such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, Madrid; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern; and MACBA, Barcelona.