19 Feb 2015

KUNSTHALLE São Paulo presents Jacobo Castellano

Jacobo Castellano

«Learning from Albayzín»


Vernissage:

Friday 20 February 2015, 7pm
Exhibition through 21 March 2015

KUNSTHALLE São Paulo invites Jacobo Castellano (*1976, Jaén, Spain) to present «Learning from Albayzín», his first solo show in Brazil that launches the project New Arte Povera.

Jacobo Castellano's artistic practice evolves from a critical contemplation of everyday objects and common materials, which he assembles into compositions that deal with personal and collective memory. Although using different media, it is mostly through sculpture that he creates his body of work, which is composed by easy and ornament free art pieces.

Once arriving in Sao Paulo, the artist was confronted with the existing contradiction in the city: if in one hand the people suffer every year from enormous floods, loosing cars, furniture and even houses; in the other, they experience now a huge water crisis, with the water supply rationed due to the negligence by the government.

Having grown up in Granada, Jacobo Castellano spent most of his life surrounded by the Arabic architecture, legacy from the period in which the moors have dominated the Iberian Peninsula. The Berbers Muslims, moors from the region of Maghreb in the North of Africa, have arrived in the region they named Al-Andalus in the early 8th century, and occupied it for almost eight centuries, leaving only in 1492 when defeated by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

Walking through Granada's historical neighborhood of Albayzín, one can see the awareness of the water's value in the arabic culture through the presence of the several Aljibes. These are big water reservoirs, constructed mostly in the underground with great architectural techniques in order to collect the rainwater from the roofs of the houses. The Aljibes always reveal small vaults or hatches through which one collects the water. The use of water by the Arabs was not restricted by for the human use, but also for irrigation and even supplying toilets and thermal baths in the city.

The title of the show «Learning from Albayzín», is a reference to the famous book «Learning from Las Vegas», written in 1972 by American architect Robert Venturi, in which he analyses the architecture developed in that city to proposed to architects a better reception of tastes and values of 'common' people. In the same way, the Andalusian artist reflects on the water problem in Brazil, by making a parallel to the Arabic architectonic knowledge for its use. For the show he created several art works that allude to architectonic elements such as the Aljibes, bricks and geometric patterns, and included also images of water, and the presence of raw clay as the basic material for construction.

Curated by Marina Coelho
Supported by: ACCIÓN CULTURAL ESPAÑOLA


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About the artist

Jacobo Castellano (*1976 Jaén, Spain). Lives and works in Madrid. Among the exhibitions in which he presented his work are: the solo show Homo Ludens, F2 Galería (2015), Madrid; memento, Galería Mai 36 (2014), Zurich; the solo show La moral del juguete, Galería Pedro Oliveira (2014), Oporto; Futbol. Arte y pasión, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey - MARCO (2012), Monterrey, Mexico; GRAFIKA: 30 artist of the young Spain, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (2011), Amman, Jordan; Itinerarios 08-09, Fundación Marcelino Botín (2010), Santander; El ángel exterminador, Bozar, Centre for Fine Arts (2010), Brussels; the solo show Cuadrilátero, La casa Encendida (2009), Madrid; II Bienal Internacional de Arte de Sevilla BIACS II: Reales Atarazanas (2006), Sevilla. Among the awards he was granted are: Premio Comunidad de Madrid-Madridfoto 2011; Beca Fundación Marcelino Botín (2008) and Beca Manuel Rivera (2006), both for the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York.


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About New Arte Povera

The project New Arte Povera aims to create a discussion about the current resurgence in the contemporary art of the practices of the Arte Povera movement, which took place in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. The project presents sequentially three artists whose works, just like in the former movement, involve the use of everyday objects and found materials, which are re-contextualized, acquiring new meanings and new signs. Their researches establish new paradigms between the nature of the works' component materials and our understanding and cognitive relation with them.

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KUNSTHALLE São Paulo
Rua dos Pinheiros, 411
05422-010 - São Paulo - SP - Brasil
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www.kunsthallesaopaulo.com
info@kunsthallesaopaulo.com


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