26 Jul 2013

The intimate subversion. Ángel Marcos at Venice

In The Intimate Subversion, the project Ángel Marcos is showing at the 55th Exposizione Internazionale d'arte de la Biennale di Venezia, the artist reflects on the nature of the earnings that define late capitalism, the yield made by money itself. This capital that generates capital without directly producing a product is the economy of the financial markets. It decides what can or cannot be produced on the basis of a paradigm of productivity totally divorced from the notion of production and profit, which can now only be evaluated based on a guarantee that credit will be paid back, on an assurance of reliability. The world that Ángel Marcos's work makes us see is not presented as a critique of reality or as a condemnation of the simulacrum: what it reveals is that the world we live in is a world reduced to the financeable. That is the contemporary reality and, in response, the artist joins forces with those who focus their actions on the open spaces of the economy of the affects.
It is likely that the actions we take to establish a desirable habitat (one that is human and democratic) will necessarily be linked to our personal feelings and thoughts, those territories of creative and affective thinking charged with energy and so difficult to destroy. We know what the territories close to belongings are capable of; we are familiar with the inability of consumption to ease our minds. So let us try the affects, because when all is said and done there is no other alternative.

Biographic notes

Ángel Marcos (Medina del Campo, Valladolid. Spain, 1955)
The work of Ángel Marcos refers constantly to the concept of the 'blind spot' as formulated by the writer and Nobel prize-winner Elias Canetti: a blind spot of inversion beyond which things are no longer true. Marcos remarks that the impetus for his gaze lies in this beyond experience; there in that place that lies between desire and publicity, this being understood as the outcome of a replacement of reality brought about by seduction.

Ángel Marcos' works can be found in several museum collections among which: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Leon (MUSAC) in León, Spain; the Margulies Collection in Miami, USA; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid, Spain; Naples Museum of Art in Naples, Florida, USA and Siemens Foundation in Vienna (Austria). His works have been presented both in individual and collective exhibitions in numerous international institutions as well as private galleries, such us: The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, (2012); Rabo de Lagartija. Planificación y Estrategia (Lizard's tail, Planning and Strategy). Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo (Artium), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2011); X Bienal de la Habana, Havana, Cuba (2009); Mi Vida. From Heaven to Hell. Life experiences in art from MUSAC Collection. Mücsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary (2009); Nuevas Historias. A new view of Spanish Photography. Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway (2009); Nuevas Historias. A new view of Spanish Phototgraphy. Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden (2009); Existencias. MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain (2008); China. MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain (2007); Jano. La doble cara de la fotografía. Fondos de la Colección Permanente. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2007); CO2. Museo de Arte Brasileira, São Paulo, Brazil (2007); À Cuba. MEP, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France (2006); En Cuba. Naples Museum of Art, Naples, USA (2006); Ángel Marcos. Bienal del Fuego. Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela (2006).