The Backspace

Antonio Vega Macotela’s work is multidisciplinary, site-specific and often engages particular communities. It explores notions of exchange, specifically regarding currency as a mediation device through which social relations are established. It addresses an alienating economic system and its social structures. He uses art as a tool that may change the meaning of everyday life as well as re-contextualize it. His pieces work at two levels first, at a concrete one: they are almost a form of activism, since they have an impact in people’s life. And secondly at a metaphorical level, when art audiences read his interventions as metaphors themselves. In Vega Macotela’s latest film we see five soldiers with different ranks and ages who are telling the recurrent dreams that they had since the day that they became part of the military. In Mexico the army holds a position that is far from civil society and full of masculinity. Soldiers are not supposed to show their vulnerable sides or weaknesses. Therefore the soldiers were afraid of being recognized while telling their dreams and it was agreed with the artist that they would do it soundless, just moving their lips. After a week the film was shown to a group of deaf people who were asked to write down the stories that they just had seen. It turned out that the lip reading was inaccurate as the writings were a combination of their interpretation of the dreams and of what they really could have read. With this intimate film Vega Macotela is showing the process of re-contextualization and making the spectator aware of the subjectivity in which he views the world. Antonio Vega Macotela’s (1980, Mexico) lives and works in Amsterdam and Mexico-City. He studied at the National Fine Arts School ENAP in Mexico-City and he currently studies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In the last years Vega Macotela participated in numerous exhibition. A short selection: Honor Faser Gallery, Los Angeles, (solo 2012), Manifesta 9 (2012), ‘The Ungovernables’, The New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York, USA, (2012), ‘Informal economies’, Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam (2011) and the 29th Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2010). Forthcoming is his solo show at Labor, Mexico-City (2013).

The oeuvre of Mounira Al Solh is multidisciplinary and moves between video, photography, installation, writing and painting. Her approach is not documentary but fictional, even fantastic. While transforming dramatic situations into ironical ones, she seems to be making conscious periodic parallells between socio-political issues and aesthetics. She frequently appropriates other artworks, and often metamorphoses into other characters and mainly fictional artists. Mounira Al Solh studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. From 2006-08, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Recently, she showed her work at a solo show in Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA). Forthcoming shows (all in 2012) include: "I decided not to save the world", Tate Modern, London, (UK) and Salt, Istanbul (TK), Bucharest Biennial, Bucharest, (RO) and "The Ungovernables",The New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York (USA).

"What a relief, to burst like a great bubble of flesh, a great bubble of transparent soap in which he recognised his face" In November we show a collaborative project by Tom Gidley and Collier Schorr. Three collages of Schorrs are presented with three ceramics of Gidleys that play off each other, acting partly as quotation marks, or projections into reality by the collages themselves. The title is a quote from the Russian novel “The Case of Comrade Tulayev”, by dissident writer Victor Serge, a classic of the Stalinist era. It suggests a transformation, a physical reaction to a psychological state. This and the political chaos described in the novel relate to the central object, Gidley’s ceramic sculpture “Inner Despot”, but also to the strong, but poetic collages of Schorr, in which androgyny plays a major part. Tom Gidley (England, 1968), receieved his MA at Central St. Martins, London. Recent solo shows include: Paradise Row, London, UK (2012), Young British Art II curated by Ryan Gander, Whitstable Biennale, Zurich, CH (2012 group), Keep me Posted, Posted, London, UK (2011), LOG, Bergamo, IT, (2010), Aldrich Contemporart Art Museum, Conneticut, USA (2010) and Limoncello, London, UK (2009). Collier Schorr (United States, 1963) graduated from The Schoolof Visual Arts, New York. Recent solo shows include: Arts Cameralis, Katowice, PL (2011), Istanbul Bienal (2011 group) 303 Gallery, New York, USA (2010), Stuart Shave Modern Art, London, UK (2010), ‘pictures by Women: A History of Moderns Photography, MOMA, New York, USA (2010 group) and Barbara Weiss, Berlin, DE (2009).