LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA [AUTO. DREAM AND MATTER] is a multifaceted ambitious exhibition project featuring around one hundred works by over sixty artists. The exhibition mines the depth of influence of the automobile within contemporary art, or more precisely, the relationship between car culture and art creation in recent decades. The lead role assigned to the automobile as a mainstay of 20th century culture and as a symbol of our consumer society, encourages us to address the art-car binomial from more than a strictly aesthetic realm, instead expanding our perspective to embrace social, political and anthropological considerations. Precisely at a moment like the present, when we can already detect a feeling of closure to the era of material culture that ruled throughout the 20th century, it becomes more pressing that ever to cast a gaze backwards on that icon that transformed habits, territory and industry.

The powerful symbolic potential of the automobile, capable of exemplifying, synthesising or channelling complex discourses on the reality of each moment, continues exciting the interest of many artists and one might well say that it is even stronger than in previous decades. The content of this exhibition lies precisely in that interest and in the fruits it has borne in recent years. The vast majority of the works presented come from the last two decades but with a heavy accent on the current moment. A period in which the reading of the car from an art perspective took on such density and complexity as well as critical perspective and detached biting wit. Throughout the 20th century the automobile was one of the most effective media for the material embodiment of dreams. Now, since crossing the threshold to this new century, artists are questioning anew the reality of those dreams. 

Erwin Wurm. UFO, 2006, mixed media, 80 x 275 x 550 cm

CURATOR: Alberto Martín
ASSISTANT CURATOR: Victoria del Val
EXHIBITION DESIGN: Longo + Roldán
ARTISTS: Roy Arden, Eric Ausol, Yael Bartana, Manolo Bautista, Michele Bazzana, Hans Op de Beeck, Valérie Belin, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Étienne Bossut, Frank Breuer, Michel de Broin, Alain Bublex, Edward Burtynsky, Andrew Bush, Hervé Coqueret, Stéphane Couturier, Félix Curto, Stephen Dean, Jeremy Dickinson, Juan Fernández, Sylvie Fleury, Alicia Framis, Juan del Junco, Panos Kokkinias, Annika Larsson, ,Miki Leal, Ange Leccia, Zilla Leutenegger, Juan López, Maider López, Chip Lord, Thom Merrick, Vik Muniz, Ahmet Öğüt, Julian Opie, Sven Pählsson, Miguel Palma, Jesús Palomino, Panamarenko, June-Bum Park, Martin Parr, Tobias Rehberger, Pedro Reyes, Betsabeé Romero, Samuel Rousseau, Bruno Rousseaud, Michael Samuels, Corinna Schnitt, Franck Scurti, Jim Shaw, Roman Signer, Dirk Skreber, Amy Stein, Thomas Struth, Xavier Veilhan, Kelley Walker, Koen Wastijn, Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky, Pamela Wilson-Ryckman, Erwin Wurm

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