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 .
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.
This morning, along with Chus Roig, we have visited Evru Zush at his home studio in Barcelona.
We remember his exhibition “Volver a ser” at Galeria SENDA almost three years ago, an exhibition of small-format pencil drawings with which he presents hybrid beings with a human face and a snake body.
Evru Zush‘s work is characterized by the construction of a personal and autobiographical mythology, based on images that seem to overflow and the creation of his own style of writing, giving rise to multiple parallel universes that maintain a subtle balance where the logic of composition barely keeps the chaos in check.
During the creative process of his latest exhibition at the gallery, Evru Zush noticed that the drawings he was working on corresponded to the iconographic structure of the representations of the “Nagas”, Hindu deities with a human face and torso, generally female, and snake body. In this way, Evru’s constant desire to “be again” materializes, in the present exhibition, in the representation of snakes, beings that, like the artist himself, shed their skin in a natural process of renewal and increase.
Exhibition “Volver a Ser” Evru Zush in Galeria SENDA 2020
The Councilor for Culture of the Eivissa City Council and president of the Board of Trustees of the Eivissa Museum of Contemporary Art, Pep Tur, the director of the Eivissa Museum of Contemporary Art, Elena Ruiz, and the artist Zush have presented the exhibition “Zush en Eivissa” which was inaugurated on Friday, June 3 at 7:00 p.m. and will remain on display until November 30, 2022.
The Councilor for Culture and President of the Board of Trustees of the Pep Tur Museum of Contemporary Art has stated that:
“Zush is one of the essential artists to understand the evolution of Spanish art in the 70s and 80s mainly. We are lucky that a large part of this production was made on the island of Eivissa. Getting a part of it together makes it one of the most important exhibitions of the season, not only in Ibiza or the Balearic Islands, but throughout the country. This exhibition demonstrates the increasingly ascending line that MACE has had in recent years.“
The exhibition focuses on the period between 1968 and 1983 in which Zush resided on the island of Ibiza, a period that became a moment of intense creativity for the artist, who experimented with very diverse formats and techniques, such as fluorescent painting illuminated by black light. This exuberant diversity of artistic proposals will be reflected in an exhibition that will present more than a hundred works, some seventy from the Suñol Soler Collection, which will be exhibited in the Arms Hall of the Ibizan museum.
The artist Zush has stated that: “ The works that can be seen in this exhibition correspond to the period of 18 years that he lived on the island. He has also added that what gives him the most joy is thinking that his works give people joy. “
The curator of the exhibition, Enrique Juncosa, has highlighted that Zush is an artist who:
“Has known how to create an inner world, creating characters and turning them into myths; He is a pioneering and current artist, as is the study of identity, his relationship with drawing, collaborations with other artists, his relationship with electronic music, and he is an advanced figure in the artistic currents of surrealism and pop art.”
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