The Acquisition Award of the SOLO Collection at the ARCOmadrid 2023 has been awarded to the work ‘The liberation of the myth (2022)’ by the Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, her work has been exhibited at the Galería Senda stand (9B21). This piece will be included in the upcoming Espacio SOLO exhibition titled “Protection No Longer Assured“, which will take place from March 10 and will explore different notions of the sublime.
The award was given by Pablo Martínez, CEO of the SOLO Collection, and Óscar Hormigos, its Chief Creative Officer, as well as Maribel López.
From left to right: Maribel López, Pablo Martínez, Óscar Hormigos and Carlos Durán.
Congratulations to the artist! We also want to express our gratitude both to the SOLO Collection for its commitment and support for contemporary art, and to the #ARCOmadrid fair for offering such an important platform for the art world.
SANDRA VÁSQUEZ DE LA HORRA, The Liberation Of The Myth 2022
The artist Evru/Zush has been awarded the 18th Electronic Art Arco-Beep prize for his work Opaulo (1990), a digital print on canvas exhibited at our stand (9B21 – Galeria SENDA). This award, established in 2006, and carried out in collaboration with the ARCOMadrid Fair, has been set as the origin, the triggering element , from the .BEEP { Collection;}, a pioneering initiative in the dissemination of electronic and digital art in Spain.
The work of Evru / Zush is a clear example of his ability to create art that transcends the limits of what is conventional. From the gallery we express our pride and satisfaction at having exhibited the winning work and at having collaborated with an artist who is a “universal pioneer in a world that promotes interactivity and viewer participation”.
Visit by Natalia Garriga, Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, Edgar García, director of the ICEC, Marta Gusta, Director of the Area of Visual Arts at ICEC, Ester Capella, delegate of the Generalitat (Madrid).
We congratulate Zush / Evru on their well-deserved award and thank the Beep Collection and the Newart Foundation for their important work in promoting electronic and digital art .
BERLIN FILES – UNAPOLOGETIC is a traveling art exhibition of the BAAR Art Journey and Residency program which took place in Berlin, Germany from October – November 2022. Works will be exhibited in the city of Barcelona February 15 – March 30, 2023 and available for public viewing at the following venues: The Cover, Senda’s Lab36 Gallery collaborating with Yurbban Trafalgar.
The works on view are inclusive of American artists who resided at Stiftung Starke during their residency, and other visual artists who participated in the BAAR Art Journey and Residency program, in a hybrid manner from across Europe and Africa. Out of 180 applications from African Diaspora, LatinX, Asian, and German artists across the globe, BiTHOUSE GROUP, the creators of BAAR Art Journey and Residency selected seven residency (actual and hybrid) participants and five BAAR+ Includes artists (underrepresented and hidden treasures in hybrid format). Artists were asked to identify two works of art created both during and/or post pandemic and to create two works during a six to eight week time period.
BAAR Art Journey and Residency was founded by Wilhelmina Jewell Sparks in order to protect, foster, and amplify the talents of emerging and established underrepresented, African Diaspora and LatinX artists who have traditionally had limited access to mainstream art markets, gallery representation, and / or integration into institutional collections. The program was created to challenge traditional art market dynamics in order to increase creator equity, generational wealth and redefine attitudes and mindsets pertaining to what is considered good art, quality art and mainstream contemporary art. Studies show that psychological safety allows for various degrees of risk – taking, creativity, and fearlessness, these elements have been known to lead to market breakthroughs (Harvard Business Review) and this was the motivation behind creating BAAR Art Journey and Residency.
The curator of this exhibit, Jewell Sparks, challenges viewers to look beyond what is seen with the naked eye and imagine the transformative state that each artist experienced during their stay in Berlin, their transformation during the pandemic, and their exploration of self and heritage as they create unapologetically. Artists were challenged to ask themselves the following questions as they created works over a six to eight week time period: What would you create if you reflected the impacts of the pandemic and the exploration of your personal journey as a creative? How much does one’s environment impact their creativity? These questions were answered and embedded into the canvases of the artists who are part of the traveling art exhibition which is currently being exhibited in Barcelona at: The Cover, Lab36, and Yurbban Trafalgar.
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BERLIN FILES includes works by BAAR Art Journey and Residency participants: A. Stoyke (Berlin), Adana Tillman (Atlanta), Alphonce Odhiambo (Nairobi), Carolina Romillo Marin (Berlin), Carl Hazlewood (Brooklyn), Cory Ford (New Jersey), Hamisi Mwangome (Berlin), Francisco “Totem” Perez (Berlin), Nanette Carter (New York), Rafaella Braga (Berlin). BAAR+ Includes artists: Alfred Mueller ( Pforzheim), Rebekka Macht (Berlin), Doriana Diaz (Philadelphia), Josephine Sagna (Bayonne), and Marina Rayzuki (Berlin).
After the recent inauguration of the monographic exhibition “Zush in Ibiza ”, at the Fundació Suñol in Barcelona, in collaboration with the Museu d’Art Contemporani d’Eivissa, Evru/Zush returns to exhibit part of his work conceived in Ibiza (1968-1983), a fundamental period for the artist, who experimented with very different formats and techniques never seen before. Precisely at that time, in 1968, the young artist Albert Porta decided to become Zush and carry out a creative self-healing strategy after he had passed through the phrenopathy hospital in Barcelona.
If we were to read in a prestigious medium in the art world that an artist has created a highly personal proposal that is absolutely coherent, ingenious, solid and bold in the metaverse, with avatars and codes, languages of the world video game or augmented reality, with stereoscopic images, colors and unreal worlds, providing a radically new scenario to the world of creation, we would launch ourselves to discover the proposal of this advanced Artist.
That is precisely what Zush already did, more than 40 years ago!
Booth view 9B21 (Artist Project) #1
Booth view 9B21 (Artist Project) #2
Evrugo Mental State, a world as real as our own, but existing in an uncertain place (which today we would probably translate as some sort of metaverse) with its own language, characters that inhabit it, currency, anthem and so many other characteristics typical of a real world, it was worked on and defined by him for years and presented in different contexts, we have seen it at MACBA, at the Reina Sofía, the São Paulo biennials or at Documenta, and even in the fantastic exhibition of the “Wizards of the Earth” at the Pompidou Center by Jean Huber Martin.
That real world, it has been and it is and that shows us how advanced in his time our honoree always was and is, who launched himself to investigate and create (through some devices, then called Personal Computers and that were unattainable except for a few professionals or researchers) and with them, through tools that would surprise us today, to continue creating their fascinating world. The WWW had not even been imagined then. Before our today.
Several words like Scanahrome or Infographics had to be invented. Works worked through digitalization and then in some cases printed on those rudimentary devices that today we would call plotters.
Zush is undoubtedly a universal pioneer in this world and that is why we want to pay tribute to his work.
“My thing is individual mythologies. I am someone who generates his own way of thinking, of seeing reality or of seeing the world. What interests me is being a bridge between sanity and madness”.
Evru/Zush
Renusa, 1989-1990
Acrylic painting on photography paper mounted on wood
200 × 100 × 5 cm
Thus, once again, the bells are once again the protagonists in space, this time accompanied by their famous nagas, Hindu deities with a human face and torso, generally of a woman, and the body of a snake. In this way, the desire to return to being Evru materializes, under the representation of snakes, beings that, like the artist himself, shed their skin in a natural process of renewal and growth. This desire for transformation is a constant in his career, through turning points that allow him to reflect on concepts such as identity, otherness or the passage of time. Thus, the desire for death and rebirth is the declaration of intent of a transgressive and unclassifiable artist who denies himself and reaffirms himself more and more emphatically and immortal.
