Exhibitions

Douz and Mille llevan La Torre de David a MadridFoto (Español/English)

LA TORRE DE DAVID

Ángela Bonadies y Juan José Olavarría

en:

MADRIDFOTO3

Stand: G25

Mayo 5 – 8, 2011

Feria de Madrid | Pabellón 5

Mayo 5: Profesionales y prensa, 12:00 to 21:00

Mayo 6 and 7: 12:00 to 21:00

Mayo 8: 11:00 to 22:00

Douz and Mille se complace en anunciar su participación en MadridFoto 2011 donde presentará obras de los artistas venezolanos Ángela Bonadies y Juan José Olavarría. La Torre de David es un proyecto en proceso que los artistas desarrollan desde hace alrededor de un año. Fue publicado recientemente en la reconocida revista de arquitectura Domus, acompañado por una entrevista a los artistas realizada por el crítico y curador de arte contemporáneo, Jesús Fuenmayor.

La Torre de David (también conocida como la Torre Confinanzas) fue construida originalmente por la compañía financiera Confinanzas como símbolo del progreso económico que caracterizaba los años 80 y formaba parte de una iniciativa urbanística para crear un bulevar financiero en el centro de Caracas. Sin embargo, cuando ocurrió la crisis bancaria en Venezuela en el año 1994, la construcción se paralizó y desde ese momento la torre se ha convertido en un ícono de la bancarrota y de los proyectos engavetados. En el año 2008 grupos de personas y familias sin casa comenzaron a habitar la torre de manera ilegal, construyendo sus viviendas precarias dentro de este cascarón urbano y creando, sin darse cuenta, un nuevo símbolo de las tensiones y las contradicciones de la realidad social y económica de Venezuela, donde el 60% de la población vive en barrios informales y peligrosos.

Las imágenes de Bonadies y Olavarría pretenden cuestionar la relación entre la arquitectura y la identidad nacional y el proyecto de representar la nación a través de un paisaje iconográfico. En La Torre de David este tema se sitúa en primer plano ya que los artistas abordan una ciudad cuyo patrimonio modernista en decadencia convive de manera incómoda con las soluciones improvisadas y volátiles que la sociedad contemporánea encuentra para sus apremiantes problemas habitacionales.

Será un verdadero placer verlos nuevamente para esta presentación!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

DOUZ AND MILLE ANNOUNCES ITS PARTICIPATION IN MADRIDFOTO WITH WORKS BY VENEZUELAN ARTISTS ANGELA BONADIES & JUAN JOSÉ OLAVARRÍA

La Torre de David (David’s Tower)

a project by artists Ángela Bonadies & Juan José Olavarría

at MADRIDFOTO 2011

May 5 – 8, 2011

Madrid

Douz and Mille is delighted to announce its participation in MadridFoto 2011 where it will be presenting a series of photographs by Venezuelan artists Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría. La Torre de David (David’s Tower) is an ongoing project that the two artists have been working on for close to a year. It was recently featured in the renowned architecture magazine Domus (http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/the-tower-of-david/) accompanied by an interview by critic and contemporary art curator Jesús Fuenmayor, which will also be available to read at MadridFoto. La Torre de David (otherwise known as Torre Confinanzas) was originally built by the finance company Confinanzas as a symbol the economic progress that characterized the 1980s and as part of an urban planning initiative to create a Wall Street style financial avenue in central Caracas. However by the time of the banking crisis that thwarted Venezuela in 1994, construction work to the tower was stopped and from then on it has become an icon of bankruptcy and truncated projects. In 2008 homeless groups and families began squatting in the skyscraper, building their precarious dwellings inside this urban shell and unwittingly creating a new icon of the tensions and contradictions of Venezuela’s social and economic reality where the superrich co-exist with some 60% of the population who live in the informal and dangerous barrios.

For MadridFoto Bonadies and Olavarría will present a series of documentary photographs of this skyscraper-turned-vertical barrio which is situated in one of the most violent urban areas the world. The images speak of the volatility of life inside the tower while also depicting aspects of the routine of daily life faced by the approximately 2500 people who have created their improvised homes in this emblematic skyscraper. The artists are deploying a number of methods of presenting their photographs, which include three large-scale prints; twelve 8×10 inch framed prints; a series of eighteen 8×10 inch prints that will be displayed in bespoke black boxes, along with texts including a timeline of the tower’s history, the Bauhaus manifesto and a text penned by intellectuals in Paris who were protesting against the erection of the Eiffel Tower.

The somewhat austere presentation of these documentary photographs seek to contribute to creating a visual memory of this idiosyncratic and incongruous building by recording aspects of the tower’s unique architecture: the improvised solutions inhabitants have found to the unfinished structure. As the texts on show suggest, the artists seek to draw ironic links to the notion of architecture as progress and salvation, evoked by the Bauhausian cry for a building of the future that would “rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith”. Bonadies and Olavarría’s images ultimately aim raise the question of the relationship between architecture and national identity and the quest to depict the nation through an iconographic landscape. In La Torre de David this issue comes to the fore as the artists deal with a city whose decaying heritage of its modernist past sits uncomfortably alongside contemporary society’s improvised and volatile solutions to dealing with pressing housing, economic and social needs.

About the artists:

Ángela Bonadies was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1970; she lives and works in Caracas and studied architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. Bonadies situates people and objects in the foreground of her work, using photography as a traditional souvenir which acts as a virtual guide for the spectator. Significant solo exhibitions include People and Things (2010) at The Private Space, Barcelona, Spain; People and Things (2009) in Periférico Caracas, Caracas and La Gran Congelación (The Great Freeze) (2002) in Galeria 491 Art i Recerca, Barcelona. Among her most recent group exhibitions are in 2010, Miradas a Europa: reflexiones digitales (Looks at Europe: digital reflections), Centro Cultural Chacao, Caracas; Didácticas (Didactics), Periférico Caracas, Caracas; Pedazos de país, Oficina #1, Caracas, Venezuela, Loop Festival, general program, Barcelona, Spain; Labyrinth 09, Writings and Observations. Botkyirka Konshall, Tumba, Sweden; Arte D, Periférico Caracas, Caracas. (2009) Dwell1, Douz and Mille, Washington, DC; Space Unlimited, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; in 2008, No sabe/No contesta (Doesn’t know/Doesn’t answer), Galería ArtexArte, Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Havana Biennial, 2006; Madrid-Procesos-Redes, Madrid, Spain, 2005; Madrid Abierto, 2005. She was the recipient of the Premio a la creación contemporánea (Grant to contemporary creativity) from Matadero Madrid in 2008; and the Premio Latinoamericano de Fotografía Josune Dorronsoro (Latin American Prize in Photograpy Josune Dorronsoro) in 2004.

Juan José Olavarría, was born in Valencia, Venezuela in 1969; he lives and works in Venezuela. He studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas “Arturo Michelena” in Valencia, Venezuela between 1984 – 1987 and in the Taller de Serigrafía “René Portocarrero” in Havana, Cuba from 1994 – 1995. Olavarría is a multi-media artist whose projects include performance, video, photography, sculpture and drawing. He has distinguished himself as one of the artists who engages most directly with Venezuelan history and politics. His most recent solo exhibitions include: MATA QUE DIOS PERDONA, El Anexo, Caracas (2010); CENTRO DOCUMENTAL (work in progress) Sala Mendoza, Caracas; and ME CAMBIO EL NOMBRE (I CHANGE MY NAME), Periférico Caracas, Caracas (2008); DISingABLE (exercise 2), i.d.art, Miami, FL (2006); DISeñoCAPACITADO. Proyecto de accesibilidad para personas discapacitadas motoras (Access Project for the handicapped.), 2003-2006. His most recent group exhibits include: DIDACTICA. Periférico Caracas / Arte Contemporáneo, Galpón 1. Caracas; ID Performance 2010. La unidad en lo múltiple, Centro Cultural Chacao / Museo de Arte Popular de Petare Bárbaro Rivas, Caracas; ARTE D, Periférico Caracas, Galpón 1.  Caracas; Venezuela Acciones Locales, La Caja, Espacio de investigación visual. Centro Cultural Chacao. Mayo / junio 2010 JUST MAD, Douz and Mille, Madrid, Spain. He participated with the Grupo Provisional  in AGUA ALTA (HIGH WATER) and PABELLON HUMEDO (DAMP PAVILLION)  (Grupo Provisional “Por Este”) as part of: “Per la costituzione di una rete fra organismi d´arte independienti”. dAPERTutto, Space A. Italia Pavillion, 48th Venice Biennial. In 1999, he received a Highly Commended award at the X Edition of the Eugenio Mendoza Prize, Sala Mendoza. Caracas, Venezuela.

Jesús Fuenmayor lives and works in Caracas. He is the Director of Periférico Caracas/Arte Contemporáneo from 2005, with 30 exhibitions under his directorship. In 2002 and 2006 he organized for Banco Mercantil a colloquium on Curatorship for Organized Art. He was a researcher for the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas, Venezuela. He curated the collective exhibition Cuarta Pared (Fourth Wall) with González-Torres, Fernández, Jaar, Lamelas, Museo del Oeste, Caracas, 1995; Co-curated Cuarto de Demostraciones / Casa ideal (Demonstration Room/Ideal House), which traveled through Caracas, New York, Antwerp and Chicago, 2001-2002; Jump Cuts. Arte Contemporáneo Venezolano. Colección Mercantil (Jump Cuts. Venezuelan Contemporary Art. Mercantil Collection), for the Americas Society, Nueva York, 2005; and for CIFO Art Space, Miami, 2007; and, Uno a la vez. Dibujos en la Colección Mercantil (One at a Time. Drawings in the Mercantil Collection) at de Museum of Contemporary Art of Zulia, Maracaibo, 2005; this exhibit was also presented in 2010 at the Espacio Mercantil in Caracas. He is a member of the Advising Committee at CIFO Art Foundation in Miami.

Rody Douzoglou established Douz and Mille to promote independent curatorial efforts and exhibition projects focused on presenting contemporary art in context.

Contact: Rody Douzoglou at rody@douzandmille.com or at 646.957.2970

Visit: www.douzandmille.com

Tags: Angela Bonadies, arte, Caracas, Domus, fotografía, Jesús Fuenmayor, Juan Jose Olavarria, La Torre de David, MadridFoto, Torre Confinanzas, venezolana, venezolano