LABoral and Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (CA2M) present Estación Experimental in Madrid
The exhibition is a co-production by both institutions and explores how art and impossible science draw together and intertwine. Following its closing in Madrid, it will be shown at LABoral between 28th October of this year and 9th April 2012
Raphaal Zarka. 'Rhombus Sectus', 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Gallerie Michel Rein, Paris
LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón and CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo of the Regional Government of Madrid today present the exhibition Estación Experimental [Experimental Station] exploring research and artistic phenomena. This co-production by both institutions can be been seen at CA2M in Móstoles from 14th May to 9th October. Afterwards, from 28th October 2011 to 9th April 2012, it will put into port at LABoral.
The Director General of Archives, Museums and Libraries of Madrid’s regional government, Isabel Rosell, presented the show this morning together with the Director of CA2M, Ferran Barenblit; the Director of LABoral, Rosina Gómez-Baeza; and the curators Andrés Mengs and Virginia Torrente, in a ceremony which was also attended by some of the 29 participating artists.
Estación Experimental explores how art and impossible science draw together and intertwine. It is not a typical exhibition about the relationship between art and science, getting embroiled in a meticulous analysis of science as a whole, and instead shifts its attention to the implausible or, at the very least, the improbable. In this way, it pauses in the short circuit generated by the crossovers between theoretical and aesthetic fictions, and the outcome in no-man’s land where new rules are invented. Along with the exhibition, a bilingual catalogue (English-Spanish) including an essay by Pablo Martín Pascual has been published.
The exhibition brings together the works by 29 artists whose practices share motivations, quests and impossible horizons with scientific research. The works are grouped into four sections: Artifacts and Mechanisms, In the Laboratory, Fieldwork and Lost in Space. The artists presented are: Julio Adán, Guillem Bayo, Alberto Baraya, Luis Bisbe, Ingrid Buchwald, Carlos Bunga, Caleb Charland, David Clarkson, Björn Dahlem, Karlos Gil, Faivovich & Goldberg, O Grivo, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, Lyn Hagan, Ilana Halperin, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Esther Mañas and Arash Moori, Milton Marques, Alistair McClymont, Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimarães, Jorge Peris, Paloma Polo, Rubén Ramos Balsa, Conrad Shawcross, Ariel Schlesinger, Alberto Tadiello, Jan Tichy, Ben Woodeson and Raphaël Zarka. Five of them exhibit works which were especially produced for this exhibition.
The works included in the exhibition challenge the spectator’s expectations by questioning the logic that common sense applies to notions such as expense, effort and risk - both in art and science. They propose extremely complex solutions for non-existent problems. They show situations in which the absurd is connected with daily life, amplifying the perceptions of reality to such a point as to make it grotesque. Video games, use and materials errors and, in general, the insistence on assertions that we know a priori to be untrue make up the raw material of Estación experimental.