'LET'S KIDNAP A SCULPTURE' AN EXHIBITION BY MUJICA, LEHYT, CESPEDES, UNZUETA AND POLHMANN AT EX-CIVIC ROOM, LONDON

exhibition views


Cristobal Lehyt


Alessandra Pohlmann, Johanna Unzueta


Alessandra Pohlmann


Juan Cespedes



Cristobal Lehyt



Johanna Unzueta


Felipe Mujica in the exhibition


artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca founder of Ex-Civic Room


Felipe Mujica with curators Carmen Julia and Tanya Barson


Ex-Civic's room lift bar!


Grace's Jamaican Kitchen outside the building


The sculpture I kidnapped!



view's of the exhibition at message salon in Zurich


exhibition's e-flyer

“Lets Kidnap a Sculpture!”
Juan Céspedes, Cristóbal Lehyt, Felipe Mujica, Alessandra Pohlmann and Johanna Unzueta
Private View: 9 September, 6-9 pm
Dates: 10 - 26 September 2010
at: ex-Civic Room
1st Floor, 242-248 Kinglsand Rd, London E8 4DG
http://www.civicroom.org.uk


“Let’s Kidnap a Sculpture!” presents works by Juan Céspedes, Cristóbal Lehyt, Felipe Mujica, Alessandra Pohlmann and Johanna Unzueta. The main idea of this project is to produce a space of encounters, a place that has no center. In order to achieve this, the artists will produce individual pieces that will come from different places. They will use different methods and systems to create their work, generating a clash with each other. The dialogue will be muted and the confrontation will be fore-grounded. To believe a collection of dissimilar pieces that interact and open fresh ways to look at things we already can recognize such as the histories of Latin American Art.

For the exhibition, Felipe Mujica will install individually colored stripes of wallpaper. These stripes will have a limited color scheme (one color per piece) and will be hung from the wall rather than glued. This will accentuate a minimal sculptural presence, a limit zone that will serve as a visual and conceptual backdrop for the other pieces in the exhibition. This wallpaper installation was recently exhibited at a solo show at message salon in Zürich, producing a first and preparatory step for its London presentation. Johanna Unzueta, Alessandra Pohlmann, Juan Céspedes and Cristóbal Lehyt will install sculptures of different materiality. Felt produced pieces made by Unzueta refer to labor; Wood and plaster abstract sculptures made by Lehyt which look like melancholic pastiches yet somehow retain access to a dubious sincerity; Pohlmann’s work attaches itself to the body, but through the filter of science fiction films, the grotesque and humorous in bodily representations of the alien/other; Céspedes will present intervened beer cans that straddle the line between youthful fetishes and decadent addictions.

The title of this exhibition is named after an action realized by the artist Vassilakis Takis, who on January 3, 1969, “marched into New York’s Museum of Modern Art, unplugged his kinetic piece Tele-sculpture (1960), and retreated to the MoMA garden with the piece in hand” (Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Art Workers“, page 13).

Civic Room is the gallery component for Working Rooms, an artists run organisation that provides studios for artists and designers, as well as an educational program geared towards the needs of the local community.

“Lets Kidnap a Sculpture!” has been made in collaboration with Pablo León de la Barra and is part of a series of exhibitions to be held in different spaces in Europe in the fall of 2010. These exhibitions are possible thanks to the support of DIRAC, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chile.

JOHANNA UNZUETA EXHIBITION IN ZURICH

http://www.christingerdemayo.com

JOHANNA UNZUETA 'DEEP IN THE POOL' AT HOUSE OF PROPELLERS, LONDON

Johanna Unzueta, and her ex-Chilean friend


House of Propellers in collaboration with curator Cecilia Brunson is pleased to present the first UK solo exhibition of Johanna Unzueta. The presentation will consist of one installation of industrial sculptures specifically made for the
gallery.

Working against any grain of sensationalism by using materials such as felt, fabric, wood and cardboard, Johanna Unzueta’s practice explores the history of labour. She sews and assembles simple representations of basic work tools like shovels, wheelbarrows, axes, boxes, nails and pipes. These objects are literal reconstructions of artefacts used in manual work, as well as delicate allegories of the history of technological advancement. In her sculptures the notion of labour exists not only in a social and historical context, but is also present in the careful handicraft and fabrication of each artwork. One of the common denominators in her installations is the atmosphere of playfulness and subtle humour, as she adjusts variations in scale that tend to shift viewer’s perception.

Johanna Unzueta was awarded the 2010 Pulse Prize for best solo booth at the New York Armory Fair. And recently exhibited her first monographic exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York.

Johanna Unzueta (b. 1974), lives and works in New York City since 2000. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions including: “Iron Folklore”, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2009); “The Skills”, Christinger de Mayo, Zürich (2008); “Linea de Hormigas”, A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2007); “Johanna Unzueta”, Thrust Projects, New York City (2007); “Ora y Labora”, Die Ecke Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago (2006); and “Trapped by Mutual Affection”, a project by Galerie Christian Nagel, Miami (2005). Upcoming group exhibitions include “Contaminaciones Contemporaneas”, at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo; and “Like a river that stops being a river or like a tree that is burning in the horizon without knowing it is burning”, Temporary Gallery, Cologne. Her second solo show at Christinger de Mayo, Zürich, will open in late August 2010.