Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Auñamendi

Image caption
ASIER MENDIZABAL

Auñamendi

  • 2005-2010
  • Photographic reproduction of photomechanical reproductions
  • 30 x 40 cm each
  • Cat. F_133
  • Acquired in 2012
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Asier Mendizabal's Auñamendi (2005-2010) was first presented at his solo exhibition in the Museo Reina Sofia in 2011 together with Soft Focus, an analysis of photography as a formula of representation based on ethnography, that is, the representation of difference. The two pieces are closely related and both reference the first General Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Basque Country. Published by Auñamendi in 1969, the encyclopaedia had sold well among the Basque population. In Soft Focus, he used the images taken for the encyclopaedia by Sigfrido Koch in 1976. In Auñamendi, he employs a selection of 36 photographs that the publisher had used to head the entries on different towns — specifically on medium-sized Basque urban areas —. Mendizabal's work subtly transforms the original source. The individually framed images are grouped together in a block, stripped of context and with no indication of what each one is, thus making it clear by association that this is a representation of a territory (or country?), the materialisation of a collective identity through the landscape. The pictures are all quite similar. Some are in black and white and others in colour, just as they were published from the late 1960s, and they all show a view of the respective municipalities taken from above. For the Basque artist, this aerial view, repeated in every picture, has clear parallels with the methods used throughout the twentieth century to show large masses gathered in demonstrations and rallies. In this way, he shows people's critical awareness, as well as their self-awareness as a collective with similar interests or shared identity constructs — that is to say, the way in which similar formal solutions arise from different contexts. Once again, Mendizabal's art addresses a central issue, identifying the signs that enable representations of the social within his particular definition of 'the popular as a technique'.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Asier Mendizabal
Ordizia (Gipuzkoa) 1973

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).

Isabel Tejeda

 
«Überbau», Arizko Dorrea, Kultur Basauri (Basauri (Bizkaia), 2005). «Asier Mendizabal», Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. MNCARS (Madrid, 2011). «Asier Mendizabal», Raven Row (London, 2011). «Scenarios about Europe: Scenario 3», Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Leipzig, 2012). «Futures of the Past», Kunst Raum Riehen (Riehen (Basel), 2013).
Barbara Steiner et al. Thinking Europe: The Scenario Book, Leipzig & Berlin, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst y Jovis Verlag, 2012. Heidi Brunnschweiler (ed.) Futures of the Past, Basel, Kunst Raum Riehen y Modo Verlag, 2013. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.