Antoni Muntadas : SPACES, SITES AND SITUATIONS

The Marcelino Botin Foundation in Santander organized an exhibition of Antoni Muntadas. The exhibition, which opens in Santander (Spain) on November 14th, will consist of fifteen works from the circuit of ideas that has occupied Muntadas since the mid-1990s. Many of the works in Spaces, Sites, and Situations evoke the everyday public places -interchangeable, unidentifiable, seemingly designed by the same global firms- that provide the settings for much of contemporary life.

The reason for presenting Antoni Muntadas’ work in Santander is because he directed one of the Fundación Marcelino Botín’s annual workshops, which took place in July 2008. As an ongoing part of the institution’s training programme, the workshops are always accompanied by an exhibition of the artist’s work.

Since the early 1970s, Antoni Muntadas has patiently elaborated a remarkable body of work whose scope and complexity are only now becoming fully apparent, the curator explains in his essay for the catalogue. “Although he has long identified himself as a media artist, this term hardly begins to suggest the extent of his activity, which encompasses video, photography, installations, artist's books, Internet projects, and public art. More than perhaps any other artist, Muntadas has taken seriously the 1970s insistence on creating an "expanded field" for art -a space for constantly testing new ways in which art can be produced, circulated, and understood. His works have ranged from explorations of the phenomenology of the human senses (in his video performances of the early 1970s involving "sensorial micro-environments”); to investigations of the global structure of the broadcast media (in the video work Cross-Cultural Television of 1987); to examinations of the way that media stereotypes can poison the social atmosphere (in his 2007 exhibition The Construction of Fear and the Loss of Public Space)”.

Two new body of photo works and a new video installation, shown for the first time in this exhibition, extend Muntadas's exploration of the standardized spaces of everyday life. Situations (2008) features works composed of two or more similar photographs mounted together so as to suggest a cluster of moments in time. The series Fences points to the condition that Muntadas calls “the construction of fear and the loss of public space”.

Also, Muntadas conceived the new video installation LLOC (2008) specifically for the ground-floor exhibition space of the Marcelino Botín Foundation. "Lloc" is the Catalan word for "place," and the video footage was shot inside an unidentified mall-like space visited by tourists and other consumers during their off hours.

From an elevated camera position that looks down on an interior plaza, Muntadas shot two video segments that were meant to be projected onto the floor of the exhibition space.

Other number of the works in this exhibition grew out of the project On translation, as The Bookstore (2001) consists of a group of photographs shot in large, mass-market bookstores in New York an London. On Translation: Standby I (2005) and On Translation: Standby II (2006), Muntadas shows groups of ordinary people around the world engaged in one of the most common yet least remarked routines of modern life: standing in line.

As Christopher Phillips, the exhibition curator points out, “Few artists have been involved in activities so geographically far-flung as Muntadas. Although in 1971 he moved his primary residence from Barcelona to New York, he returned to Spain often enough to play a key role in the Barcelona-based Grup de Treball from 1973 to 1975. Since that time, Mundadas has been engaged in art projects that have taken him regularly to Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, North America, and more recently Asia. In every case, he seeks to bring a critical, global perspective to the local situation he encounters … Rejecting the idea that the artist should be a solitary creator, he prefers to gather ad hoc teams of local collaborators who may include historians, anthropologists, city planners, critics, artists, sociologists, and political activists. From this unusually open, gregarious approach grows the rich, multifaceted character of his work”.

The Guardian critic Adrian Searle also writes for the catalogue: “Muntadas offers us images, information and situations. His art is a kind of interpretation of the things around him, and in exchange all we can offer is the same: more readings, more interpretations, more stories. He does his work, we do ours”.

The exhibition catalogue published by the Fundación Marcelino Botín will contain an essay by the curator, entitled “Spaces, Sites and Situations”, the text “Surveillance”, by Adrian Searle; and another piece which is the transcription of a conversation between Antoni Mercader and the artist.

Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942). He studied at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales in Barcelona and at the Pratt Graphic Center in New York, where he has lived since 1971. Muntadas has been awarded several prizes and grants by institutions, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Electronica in Linz and Laser d’Or in Locarno. He was also awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas 2005 granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

SPACES, SITES AND SITUATIONS Solo show by Antoni Muntadas, in which he investigates the standardized spaces of everyday life

Organized, produced and hosted: Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander. Dates: From November 14th, 2008, to January 11th , 2009.

Curator: Christopher Phillips, International Center of Photographie, New York

The Fundación Marcelino Botín was founded in 1964 by Marcelino Botín-Sanz de Sautuola and his wife Carmen Yllera. Its mission is to encourage, foster and contribute to making a fairer, more efficient and responsible society. It is a Spanish foundation, with offices in Santander the capital city of Cantabria, financed by its own capital and resources and under the auspices of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Emilio Botín is the President of its Board of Patrons.

Its activities are focussed on four areas it considers priority concerns: the education of young people, the transfer of technological research to industry, rural development and cultural endeavour. It employs a long-term approach, clear objectives, well-defined strategies and ongoing evaluations. The aim is to produce intervention models that may be used by others.

Furthermore, the Foundation collaborates with institutions and universities on social and scientific projects.

The head office of the Foundation is located in the house where the palaeontologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, grandfather of the Foundation’s founder, lived with his family. This building, on the Calle Pedrueca, houses the offices, management, auditorium, conference room, archives and library. The Foundation has three additional venues: an exhibition venue, located near its head office; Villa Iris, built in 1913, where art exhibitions and workshops are held; and the Promontorio, the house built from 1915 to 1918 where Emilio Botín-Sanz de Sautuola lived with his family.

SPACES, SITES AND SITUATIONS
Solo show by Antoni Muntadas, in which he investigates the standardized spaces of everyday life
Kurator: Christopher Phillips