Folleto Carsten Holler - Goya EN

OPENING HOURS Winter (October - May) Tuesday - Sunday 10:00 am - 8:00 pm

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Summer (June - September) Tuesday - Sunday 10:00 am - 9:00 pm Closed 1 January & 25 December

ADMISSION

Workshop Índigo Workshop Cobalto

Workshop Marino

Workshop Cian

FLOOR 2

General admission: €8 East entrance

Concession: €4 Over 65s, students from 16 to 25, and large families.

CARSTEN HÖLLER: Y

West entrance TICKETS

Free entry: Friends of Centro Botín, children under 16, unemployed, sponsors, accredited journalists and members of ICOM (International Council of Museums).

Sala 22 GALLERY

Groups: €6 per person Minimum 8, maximum 30 people –guide/organiser included-.

FLOOR 1 AGILITY AND AUDACITY. GOYA’S DRAWINGS

CONSULT EXHIBITIONS AT #CarstenHoller #DibujosdeGoya #LaColección #CentroBotín

FLOOR 0 Visitor Information Shop Restaurant

East entrance

Muelle de Albareda, s/n Jardines de Pereda 39004 Santander (Spain) Tel. (+34) 942 04 71 47 centrobotin.org

ART AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

GALLERY Sala 11

West entrance

El Muelle

TICKETS

ART AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

24 JUNE, 2017JANUARY 2018 GALLERY 1 Curator: Benjamin Weil

Fundación Botín acquired the majority of the artworks on display in this exhibition in the early years of the present century. The show affords visitors an overview of the work undertaken by Fundación Botín in the realm of the visual arts in the last twenty-five years or so. This selection includes artworks by recognised contemporary masters who have taught at the Santander Visual Arts Workshop at Villa Iris over the last twenty years, as well as pieces by a number of artists who have benefited from the programme of Visual Arts Scholarships which the foundation has been running since 1993, and who have since gone on to greater things.

And so, works by artists of the stature of Miroslaw Balka, Tacita Dean, Carlos Garaicoa, Lothar Baumgarten, Mona Hatoum, Antoni Muntadas and Juan Uslé are on display on the first floor exhibition hall alongside works by Lara Almarcegui, Carlos Bunga, Sandra Gamarra, Renata Lucas, Wilfredo Prieto and Fernando Sánchez Castillo, among others.

Carlos Bunga. Attempt to preserve, 2014

The overall set of works on show is highly diverse, both in terms of supports and media: photography, installation, sculpture, video, drawing and so on, as well as in the diversity of their conceptual focus. The selection wishes to provide a perspective on the current state of artistic practice, both in terms of its form and content; to reflect upon how classic art forms have evolved, how new narratives have been unfolding, and how contemporary artists address a cultural context that is informed by both local and global circumstances.

All the selected works ponder the complexity of a world characterized by large mutations, social instability, conflicts and tensions of all kinds, as well as the acceleration of time.

This affects the way one may perceive a reality that tends to be increasingly fragmented, as fact and fiction mingle in an ever more intricate fashion. Art and the exhibition space remain as one of the few bastions of slowed-down time, one made for observation and contemplation, which, in turn, fosters critical thinking and comprehension.

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1. JUAN USLÉ I Dreamt that you Revealed. The Guest, 2004

3. MONA HATOUM Still-Life, 2009

“Soñé que revelabas” is a series of paintings Juan Uslé has been working on for over two decades. He usually paints them during the night, in silence, listening to his own heart and applying a brushstroke at each beat.

The painting thus becomes a trace and proof of this essential vitality, and also a kind of clock that marks the passing of time, while also calling to mind a musical score.

Lying on a table, we see a set of colourful, beautifully crafted and incredibly tactile ceramic pieces. On closer examination, we realise that they are actually casts of hand grenades, instruments of destruction and mutilation. This work is quite typical of the way Mona Hatoum formally employs the language of Minimal art to reflect upon the inner or hidden violence in contemporary society.

2. CARLOS GARAICOA The Word Transformed (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII y VIII), 2009

4. LARA ALMARCEGUI Wastelands of Amsterdam, 1998-99

Carlos Garaicoa explores the way architecture and propaganda are intertwined in Cuba, a country where the ruins of a former capitalist order are metaphorically augmented by the promise of a better future, per the ubiquitous government’s indoctrination campaigns. Confronting the limits of a utopia, he also reflects in more general terms upon the city, its decay and its constant evolution.

Lara Almarcegui examines processes of urban transformation brought on by political, social, and economic change, focusing her attention on features that are usually overlooked: wastelands, construction materials, invisible elements. She photographs the sites, and collects historical, geographic, ecological, and sociological data about those vacant areas, before they get to be transformed into new developments. This early work was made in Amsterdam, where the artist is based.

EXHIBITIONS

CARSTEN HÖLLER: Y

24 JUNE10 SEPTEMBER, 2017 GALLERY 2 Curators: Vicente Todolí Udo Kittelmann

Centro Botín presents the first solo show by Carsten Höller (Brussels, 1961) held in Spain to date. It proffers a unique walkthrough of the last decade in the output of this Belgian artist, celebrated worldwide for his constant exploration of the nature of the spectator’s experience.

The exhibition features fourteen works including such iconic pieces as Y, 2003; Elevator Bed, 2010, in which guests can spend a night at Centro Botín; High Psycho Tank, 2015, which allows visitors to float in a tank; and Pill Clock, 2015.

Y, 2003. View of Carsten Höller: Y, Centro Botín, Santander, 2017.

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Vienna. Photo: Attilio Maranzano

There are two ways to approach this exhibition: the first would be to enter the space and walk through it, to encounter the large-scale sculptures, enjoy their architectural quality; and the second would consist in entering the exhibition through Y, the work which gives its title to the show, and guides the visitor either North or South, to experiment a unique set of experiences.

Choice therefore determines one’s engagement with the exhibition.

As in most of Carsten Höller’s exhibitions, behavioural science — a legacy of the artist’s past as a scientist— is never far away.

One could imagine each work as a scientific experiment. The sculptural object then becomes a tool to enter another dimension of our reality, contributing to the shift in our perception of space and time. What the artist offers each visitor is something he calls “a moment between delight and madness”.

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Photos: Attilio Maranzano

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1. Y, 2003 A corridor surrounded by rings of light which convey a sense of movement as they are turned on and off. At the end of the corridor the work forks in two, and the movement of the light changes depending on the path chosen. It anticipates the doubling of the exhibition and how it may be experienced; right from the beginning, it produces a sense of disorientation that is further emphasized by the presence of mirrors at the end.

4. HIGH PSYCHO TANK, 2014 Based on military experiments into sensorial isolation, High Psycho Tank consists of a tall structure which can be accessed by steps that contains a tank filled with water at body temperature saturated with Epsom salt.

Resting in this saline solution, the visitor reaches a degree of full relaxation difficult to attain otherwise.

2. SWINGING SPIRAL, 2010 This corridor is suspended from the ceiling, hanging just a few millimetres above ground, so that it keeps moving almost imperceptibly but constantly, creating a sense of distortion. A mathematical formula predicates its design: the space tends to diminish in a counter-exponential fashion, as the height of the ceiling increases, leading to a narrow and tall, dark and concealed space.

5. CANARY SCALE, 2010 Two identical cages are on display in the hall, linked to each other by a scale hanging from the ceiling. Each one contains an equal number of canaries, but of two different species. The needle and dial enable the visitor to read when the movements of the birds alter the equilibrium.

3. ELEVATOR BED, 2010 The fantasy of sleeping in an art centre prompted Carsten Hรถller to conceive a series of beds which have been installed in various museums. Elevator Bed is a large round bed that rises up to 3.5 metres above ground, equipped with all the comforts of a luxury hotel suite in which guests can spend the night with views over the bay of Santander, and a unique perspective of the exhibition.

6. SEVEN SLIDING DOORS CORRIDOR, 2016

Seven automatic doors mirrored each side are installed at equal distances down a mirrored corridor, one after the next and parallel to one another. As one proceeds down the corridor, the movement of the visitor triggers the opening and closing of the doors. The mirrors alter the perception of the space, and produce an endless reflection of the visitor and the space.

AGILITY AND AUDACITY. GOYA’S DRAWINGS

24 JUNE24 SEPTEMBER, 2017 GALLERY 1 Curators: José Manuel Matilla Manuela Mena

This exhibition is the first tangible result of the agreement signed in 2015 between Fundación Botín and Museo Nacional del Prado for the study, catalogue raisonné, publication and exhibition of the drawings by Goya. Often viewed as Goya’s “visual diary”, the artist’s drawings reveal his inner self and express his personal view of the world.

The importance of Goya’s drawings within his overall production is comparable to his paintings and prints, and this is true from a quantitative point of view —with around one thousand known examples— as well as in terms of their aesthetic relevance and ideological influence.

Francisco de Goya, Another Madness of His in the Same Ring, La Tauromaquia series, 1815

The 83 drawings on view in this exhibition afford a proper appreciation of the evolution of Goya’s art and thinking from his early years in Madrid, where he worked at the Santa Bárbara Royal Tapestry Factory in the 1770s, to the final days of his life during his self-imposed exile in Boudreaux between 1824 and 1828. The half-century that passed between these two bookends speaks of the extraordinary coherence of his life’s work, in which his main issues of concern vary in accordance with the changes taking place in

Spanish society and indeed in his own individual situation.

A number of themes and figures would recur throughout his work, and it is fascinating to see how he leveraged them to express a view of the human condition hitherto unseen in artists of his time. Half-way between reality and imagination, in his works on paper one can appreciate a coherent transformation of his way of understanding and criticising Mankind.

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DREAM 1. UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, THE AUTHOR DREAMING

Photos: Museo del Prado

SATURN DEVOURING HIS SONS

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Preparatory drawing for Capricho 43, The sleep of reason produces monsters, 1797

Preparatory drawing for a Capricho never etched?, c. 1797

Goya imagines himself asleep at his desk.

The inscription “Dream 1” corresponds to his original idea of calling this series Dreams.

On the front of the desk, which serves as a frontispiece, he has written: “Universal Language. Drawn and Engraved by Fco. De Goya, year 1797”. Further down, he describes the intention of the work: “The author dreaming. His only intention is to banish prejudicial vulgarities and bear firm witness, with this work of fancy, to the truth”.

The central figure of this drawing is usually believed to be the god Saturn who devoured his children upon their birth. However, in this composition the bearded old man is devouring the bodies of two adult men which have been previously undressed and disarmed, as we can gather from the discarded clothing and knives.

Technically speaking, it is very close to the drawings in the Los Caprichos suite, though he did not print the etching, and the theme also relates it with the paintings of cannibals he made around the same time.

2. GROUP OF MAJAS Album B [28], 1794-1795

4. I AM STILL LEARNING Album G [54], 1824-1828

ON THE STROLL

Goya has arranged the majas in a circle in order to accentuate the idea of the group.

The young women are elegantly dressed in the popular style of the majas, somewhat excessively ornate with lace trimmings.

Their attire plays a key part in the game of seduction, as one can observe in the black mantilla hiding half the face of the young woman on the right, who is also making signs with her fan.

This is the drawing that best sums up Goya’s spirit in the final years of his life. It has often been cast as a symbolic self-portrait expressive of his unwavering desire for personal development.

While his earlier works conveyed a negative concept of the passage of time, the perspective is significantly different here, beginning with the eloquent and classically rooted title, which reflects Goya’s renewed optimism in Bordeaux. But it also speaks to physical decline and the solitude of an old man traveling along a dark road.