Arco 2008: A special space for youn artists Arco40

Arco 2008: Brazil is present at Arco 2008! Take a look to the General Programme of Arco 2008. The galleries participating in this central nucleus of the art fair will also be showing the best of video art, from Spain and around the world. Many stands in this section will reserve part of their space as a screening area, or will project images on the wall amidst their paintings, graphics, photos, and sculptures.

Brazil at Arco
With a major contingent of video artists, BRAZIL AT ARCO, the pavilion of this year’s special guest country, will also be putting the accent on this medium.  A highlight is the work by Debora Santiago (Brazil, 1972), at the YBAKATU ESPACIO DE ARTE. Santiago will be participating with a selection of her latest video pieces, as will her countryman Matheus Rocha Pitta (Brazil, 1980) at the gallery NOVEMBRO.  These young Brazilian artists use their projects to question the consumer society and icons of globalization.

General Programme
Highlights will include the Luxembourg gallery BEAUMONTPUBLIC, showing the renowned Croatian performance artist Marina Abramoviæ, who, along with the selection of photographs, will present her latest video work.  This same stand will also featured work by the Lithuanian Jonas Mekas (1922), Scenes of the Life of Hermann Nitsch (2007) and L’action du Burgtheater de Vienne (2005).

Along these same lines, a noteworthy stand is that of the U.S. gallery I-20, showing the new piece Untitled version (I See a Darkness), a short video by João Onofre (Portugal, 1976), and Asterión (2006), a digital video by Gonzalo Lebrija (Mexico City, 1972). The British gallery WILKINSON will be presenting work by Joan Jonas (New York, 1936), including Dog Hoop, a piece inspired by her childhood and happy memories of going to the circus.

A leading figure on the London scene, Imogen Stidworthy (England, 1963), will also be at ARCO8, on the roster of Dutch gallery AKINCI.  This artist will present her video installation 7AM (2005), which reflects on certain Chinese customs. 
Spanish galleries are becoming especially committed to video art, as established spaces incorporate both emerging and well-known figures into their programming.  A highlight at the stand of JUANA DE AIZPURU is a half-hour video by Cristina Lucas (Jaén, Spain, 1973), Pantone (2007), a piece in 3-D animation that has already made quite a stir at the Istanbul Biennale.  Along with Lucas, another major presence is Jordi Colomer, who will also be showing his latest work at the stand of this doyenne of the Spanish scene.

Another Madrid gallery, PEPE COBO, will be showing work by Willie Doherty (Derry, Northern Ireland, 1959), which reflects on universal questions involving the contradictions between reality as it is experienced, and as it is constructed by the instrumental languages of power.  One of the latest pieces by Manu Arregui (Spain, 1970) will be at ESPACIO MÍNIMO, as well as recent projects by Filipa César (Portugal, 1975) at another Madrid gallery, DISTRITO CU4ATRO.

Videos by the up-and-coming young artist Lidia Benavides (Madrid, 1971), as well as the well-established Darío Urzay (Spain, 1958), will be at the stand of ESTIARTE.  For its part, a gallery from the southeastern Spanish city of Murcia, T20,  will be showing video-based projects by Mira Bernabeu (Alicante, Spain, 1969) and Kaoru Katayama (Japan, 1966), two leading figures on today’s video-art scene.

Amongst the Catalan galleries in the GENERAL PROGRAMME, one of the most outstanding video pieces will be at PALMA DOTZE.  Titled Boum, boum, en avant la musique!  (Paris 1974 – Barcelona 2007), it is a half-hour film by Antoni Miralda and Benet Rosell.   A work of fiction shot in Paris with a 16-mm camera, whose actors are Jaume Xifra and the French critic Pierre Restany, it was digitally remastered last year for an exhibition at the gallery.  The film features a wide range of songs, documentary photographs, and voice recordings from World War I.

ARCO40
As the space showcasing the best in young artists from Spain and abroad, ARCO40, within the GENERAL PROGRAMME, will spotlight emerging video artists arriving at ARCO8 with a wide variety of galleries.

Salzburg-born Irene Andessner will present her project Maternoster (2007), a 37-minute-long DVD to be screened at the ARCO newcomers JM, from Malaga, Spain.  Through her staged pieces, the artist herself adopts roles that subvert the classical idea of the self portrait, putting the accent on the capacity for personality exchange involved in performance.  With Maternoster, she records an interactive event at the Haus der Industrie Wien (headquarters of Austria’s industrial federation) in which she inverts the patriarchal dominance of the business world.  During the original performance, Andessner temporarily changed the name of building to Maternoster (Our Mother), and presented four tableaux vivants of mythical maternal figures going up and down its wooden elevator: Alma Mater, Mary of Nazareth, Mother Courage –played by Anna Fierling – and Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone.

In keeping with his usual line of work, Arthur Kleinjan (Netherlands, 1970) is presenting, at the stand of Dutch gallery RONMANDOS, his latest video piece, Atocha (2007).  The characters in this five-minute piece are engrossed in something that is above them.  They walk slowly forward, whilst staring up at the light.  Although what they are looking at remains unclear, it seems that they are delighted and entranced by it.  Kleinjan explores the human experience in relation to the metaphysical experience of time, place, and identity.  By playing with these concepts, the artist draws the viewer into his work.

Over at the Greek gallery THE APARTMENT, the young artist Maria Antelman (Athens, 1972) will be presenting her four-minute piece TaH Pagh TaHbe (2006). The piece is a translation of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy into Klingon—an imaginary language invented for the Star Trek television and film series—in which she reflects on being and identity.

Other noteworthy stands for video in this section of ARCO8 are that of the Lithuanian gallery VARTAI, which is showing a single piece, a video installation by Ugnius Gelguda (Lithuania,1977) titled Memory Leak, as well as the Italian LE CASE D’ARTE, presenting Song (2007), a two-minute piece by Marco Belfiore.