Asier Mendizabal studied Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country, graduating in the mid-1990s. The main body of his work is derived from the relationships between form, discourse and ideology. Mendizabal analyses the capacity of signs to materialise ideas and the way in which culture and its devices generate identity constructs or project political ideologies. He has achieved this by critically observing twentieth century avant-garde art, exploring the profound connections between politics and the aesthetics of militant and emancipatory art it produces. He also analyses artistic representations related to the revolutionary left in other periods in history. During the early decades of the twentieth century there were two opposing models for a more effective materialisation of the contemporary, abstraction and realism. Mendizabal, however, questions the supposed impossibility of transforming the political imaginary of the abstract tradition and the efficacy defended by realism. He starts from the design of some of its political devices, analysing, for example, the popular success of abstract monumental sculpture in the Basque Country, a plastic discourse that first emerged in the 1950s. His work is underpinned by the local genealogy of Basque sculpture which, since the emergence of artists such as Txomin Badiola and Pello Irazu in the 1980s and 1990s, has taken Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida as its essential reference points, and thence to the (not always continuous) reinterpretation they in turn made of the avant-garde movements, chiefly constructivism.
Asier Mendizabal's work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (2008); Fundación Caja General de Depósitos Culturgest (Lisbon, 2010); the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2011) and the San Telmo Museum (Donostia-San Sebastian, 2014). His work has been shown at Manifesta 5 (Donostia/San Sebastian, 2004); the Bucharest Biennial (Romania, 2010); the Venice Biennale (2011); and the São Paulo Biennial (2014). He was awarded the Radio Nacional de España Ojo Crítico Prize (2010).
Asier Mendizabal studied Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country, graduating in the mid-1990s. The main body of his work is derived from the relationships between form, discourse and ideology. Mendizabal analyses the capacity of signs to materialise ideas and the way in which culture and its devices generate identity constructs or project political ideologies. He has achieved this by critically observing twentieth century avant-garde art, exploring the profound connections between politics and the aesthetics of militant and emancipatory art it produces. He also analyses artistic representations related to the revolutionary left in other periods in history. During the early decades of the twentieth century there were two opposing models for a more effective materialisation of the contemporary, abstraction and realism. Mendizabal, however, questions the supposed impossibility of transforming the political imaginary of the abstract tradition and the efficacy defended by realism. He starts from the design of some of its political devices, analysing, for example, the popular success of abstract monumental sculpture in the Basque Country, a plastic discourse that first emerged in the 1950s. His work is underpinned by the local genealogy of Basque sculpture which, since the emergence of artists such as Txomin Badiola and Pello Irazu in the 1980s and 1990s, has taken Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida as its essential reference points, and thence to the (not always continuous) reinterpretation they in turn made of the avant-garde movements, chiefly constructivism.
Asier Mendizabal's work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (2008); Fundación Caja General de Depósitos Culturgest (Lisbon, 2010); the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2011) and the San Telmo Museum (Donostia-San Sebastian, 2014). His work has been shown at Manifesta 5 (Donostia/San Sebastian, 2004); the Bucharest Biennial (Romania, 2010); the Venice Biennale (2011); and the São Paulo Biennial (2014). He was awarded the Radio Nacional de España Ojo Crítico Prize (2010).