La BF15espace d'art contemporain

11 quai de la Pêcherie69001 Lyon

T/F 33 (0)4 78 28 66 63infos@labf15.org

www.labf15.org

Perrine Lacroix Direction & ProgrammationFlorence Meyssonnier Coordination

association soutenue par la Ville de Lyon, la Région Rhône-Alpes et le Ministère de la Culture / DRAC Rhône-Alpes

Mireia c. SaladriguesABANS QUE ELS GESTOS ESDEVINGUIN PARAULES

(before gestures become words)

Our gestures reflect tracing patterns, internalized rules, behavioural habits... as many learned rituals which determine our movements in art spaces. Spaces or ritual structures – to use Carol Duncan's words – incite visitors, consciously or unconsciously, to interpret a specific representation, a performance. So for his first exhibition in France, the Spanish artist Mireia c. Saladrigues invites us in La BF15, to interact with these mechanisms. Her proposal explores the art space or the museum as “an impresario, or more strictly a régisseur, neither actor nor audience, but the controlling intermediary who sets the scene, induces a receptive mood in the spectator, the bids the actors take the stage and be their artistic selves.” 1

In Horizontal Orientation the plastic bubble wrap, which is typically used when transporting artworks, covers the floor of the main exhibition space. One could imagine that the gallery was undergoing renovation, or that the floor was being protected for being covered with a different material, the same way archaeological artefacts remain buried for a period of time.

Returning to the subject of walking (this minimal physical gesture needed to visit an exhibition), Mireia c. Saladrigues subtly guides us toward a physical recognition of the place, where our condition as spectators makes us involuntary performers, or sound makers. This turn could potentially be read as a participatory accent or a willingness to incorporate the visitors into the exhibition, but actually puts pressure on conventional relationships between artistic production and consumption, between artistic perception and experience.

A new production, the film A Specific Representation, is another invitation to think about the dichotomy between what is biological and what is learned; between the natural and the representation. There some dancers recall the body memory, while recovering and reenacting the same learned gestures and transits, undergoing a physical exercise for highlighting how learned rituals determine our movements in art spaces.

1- Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals. Inside Public Art Museums, Routledge, 1995, p. 8

exhibition 12 september to 8 november 2014

Wednesday to Saturday from 2 to 7pm (Hôtel de Ville subway)

opening Thursday, September 11

from 6pm to 9pm

curator Perrine Lacroix

in partnership with àngels barcelona gallery

parisART

part of the 16th Lyon Dance Biennale's Off

andPhoto Docks Art Fair's Itinérances

© Mireia c. Saladrigues, Rotation #1 The Route, 2013.

© Mireia c. Saladrigues, Rotation #1 The Route, 2013.

My practice focuses on the study of audiences, channels of reception, and the conditions that spectators encounter. I have recently entered fully into the analysis of the institution as a space of social and economical production and the way societies of control are reflected in the artistic framework, with a particular focus on the social definition of the productive roles of the public and on the surveillance systems used by art centres and museums.

I develop the work by probing experiences in relation to the reception of art and gathering findings based on the interaction between art and its public. I believe that subjection to the context is, by nature, fundamental to the conception of each project. Starting from a personal state of alertness, I apply strategies of intuition-understanding onto art itself, making the practice revolve around the relationship with the end user, ‘accompanying’ the work through its constant changes and its return to the social sphere from which it emerged.This scenario entails the alternation of empirical observation and theoretical sources, between experimentation with formats and content analysis, in order to create a path based on feedback between trial and error, narrative and process, which gives shape to transitory situations of dialectics involving author, artwork, receiver and environment; in which the boundaries between artistic work and the relationship to the public are rather blurred.

Influenced by documentary and archival practices, performance, relational aesthetics and institutional critique, I channel my collector passion into a mnemonic reconstruction, formalised through schemes that are not very orthodox for artwork-product clichés, removed many times from the demands of the market.

My recurring concerns are otherness in regard to cultural translation, the social imaginary and prejudices; the distance between contemporary art and the bulk of the population; respect towards artistic work as a social and professional category, and the relational systems that the artwork sets up in regard to the public in accordance with the specific institutional mechanism that they are framed within.

Human contact is at the origin of my projects, which always require an interlocutor-accomplice who is willing to engage with the situation that is brought about, with the proposed hiatus for reflection in the midst of artistic circulation, through which I aspire to introduce controversy around the actual meaning of artistic practice and its genuine experiential significance to the user.

How can the essence of art approach the subjectivity of the individual? Both enthusiastic and sceptical, between the optimism of the possible and the angst of the attainable, I defend the post-productive capacity of art – that which can endow it with the proficiency it requires to develop autonomously in its relationship to the spectator in spite of the regulated procedures that surround its contact with the public. And isn’t that the meta-narrative that supposedly underlies the base of art and, as such, its purpose?

Mireia c. Saladrigues

Human contact is at the origin of my projects, which

always require an interlocutor-accomplice who is willing to

engage with the situation that is brought about...

Mireia c. Saladrigues, Welcome. We're On The Same Time, 2012.

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions (selection) 2013 Rotations #2 The Exit / Rotations #1 The Route, galerie àngels barcelona2012 The genesis of a Musem. L’aparador. Abelló Museum, Mollet Welcome. We are on the same Time. galerie àngels barcelona2011 AKRON. Impossibilitats, supervivències extremes en l’art, Espai Guinovart, Agramunt El seu museu. The end is where we start from, Fondation Joan Miró, Barcelona Radicalment Emancipat(s), Audiències Cardinals, Espai Social Caja, Madrid 2010 Projecte E/F, Loop, Francesca Bonemaison, Barcelona2009 Els significats de l’Art, Capella de Sant Roc,Valls Zoolar Eclipse. Kairós, momentos de claridad, EspaiDos Sala Muncunill, Terrassa

Recent and upcoming group exhibitions (selection)2014 Creadors en Residència, La Capella, Barcelona Llocs comuns. Can Felipa, Barcelona2013 FAQ, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona No tocar, por favor, Artium Museum, Vitoria Espais Creatius del Poble Nou, Can Felipa, Barcelona Open Studios. HANGAR, Barcelona2012 El convit, Amb Antoni Miralda, Barcelona “Who told you so? ! ” #3 Truth vs. Scene. “Accent your positive and delete your negative” – Donna Karan, Within the cicle WHO TOLD YOU SO?! Stories of collectivity vs. individual narra tions, Onomatopee, Eindhoven Passant Pàgina. El llibre com a territori d’art, Culture Department of Catalan Government. Contemporary Art Museum of Granollers, Terrassa, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Capellades, Mollet del Vallès, Manresa, Lleida and Badalona Neurotic Absurdities, Kallio Kunsthalle Taidehalli Linja. Helsinki2011 Videonale: Dialogue in Contemporary Video Art, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Garage 2.0, Künstlerhaus Dortmund Ars Cameralis Silesiae Superioris, Katowice Videonale.13, Kunstmuseum Bonn2010 Nuevas historias, A view of Spanish Photograhpy and Video Art, National Museum of Photography at Royal Library, Copenhagen Vic Cambrils Barcelona / Verges Cervera Barcelona / Viladamat Castelldefels Barcelona / Vilafranca Cornella Barcelona / Valls Collserola Barcelona… A Library Project. Latitudes Midway Contemporary Art. From Oct. 21st Minneapolis Nodes de Gràcia. Experimentem amb l’art. May 28th – 30th. Barcelona Arts Libris Barcelona, Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona

Mireia c. Saladrigues Born in 1978

Lives and works in Barcelonawww.mireiasaladrigues.com

represented by àngels barcelonawww.angelsbarcelona.com

Mireia c. Saladrigues,, Visitors Leaving the Museum, 2012This film pays tribute to the film Exit of the Lumière factory in Lyon, directed by Louis Lumière, released in 1895.