EXILE

Aggtelek, Poéticas del Objeto (Life is unbearable), 2012, mixed media installation, 300 x 140 x 140 cm

Aggtelek & Gwenn Thomas, 2012, Installation view, Artissima 19

Aggtelek, Poéticas del Objeto (I am not at an age to go back and get those jobs that made me sweat Coca-Cola all day long. God, please give me the aura to come up with a mobile application I can sell to facebook or whoever), 2012, mixed media installation, 300 x 140 x 140 cm

Aggtelek & Gwenn Thomas, 2012, Installation view, Artissima 19

Gwenn Thomas, Delay Delay (Documentation of Joan Jonas Performance, 1972), two silver-gelatin prints from vintage negative, 31.75 x 21.6 cm each, printed 2012

Aggtelek, Poéticas del Objeto (Instructions manual for the future sculptor: i-sculpture), 2012, mixed media installation, 300 x 140 x 140 cm

Aggtelek, Poéticas del Objeto (I am the danger), 2012, mixed media installation, 300 x 140 x 140 cm

Aggtelek, Poéticas del Objeto (This is something I had to do before I turn to dust in an urn), 2012, mixed media installation, 300 x 140 x 140 cm

Aggtelek, Poéticas del Objeto (Life is a killer), 2012, mixed media installation, 300 x 140 x 140 cm

EXILE’s booth for Artissima 19 combines just two works by two gallery Artists: Aggtelek and Gwenn Thomas.

The large sculptural work Poéticas del Objeto by Spanish artist duo Aggtelek consists of 14 individual sculptures, each paired with a piece of text and presented on a large pedastal. Through these 14 pairings the artists approach various problems and crises of today’s social, economic as well as artistic situation.

This work by Aggtelek is juxtaposed by a set of two photographs taken by Gwenn Thomas of the performance Delay Delay by Joan Jonas in 1972. Their subtle shift of horizon and action represents a passage of perfomative time, frozen in these two phototgraphs.

Aggtelek’s quite personal though distinctly humorous approach to their situation as artists in Spain becomes a sobering contrast to Gwenn Thomas photographs that offer an almost utopian outlook into a past where artistic production and its commodification appear not as tightly interdependent.

Whitin the otherwise empty booth both works create a dialogue about issues of artist practice and production in the face of an ongoing global financial crisis.