Lara Almarcegui, installation view: Construction Rubble of Secession's Main Hall, 2010, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler
In her projects, the Spanish-born artist Lara Almarcegui, who lives in Rotterdam, examines processes of urban transformation brought on by political, social, and economic change. Since the mid-1990s, she has studied urban features that are not usually the focus of attention: wastelands, construction materials, invisible elements. In her first solo show in Austria, Lara Almarcegui has created three new works for the Secession that relate closely to the city of Vienna and to the historic exhibition house while also recurring to earlier works the artist developed in various cities all over the world.
Lara Almarcegui, installation view: Construction Rubble of Secession's Main Hall, 2010, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler
Lara Almarcegui frequently works outdoors. She has already implemented numerous international projects, from the restoration of a market hall slated for demolition in San Sebastián (Spain) to close studies of derelict lots in Rotterdam, Bilbao, São Paulo, Lisbon, and Amsterdam. She collects historical, geographic, ecological, and sociological data about vacant areas in the urban space that will soon have changed, documenting them and interviewing experts. “One wasteland has very different characteristics from the next. I try to present each site in as much detail as I can, zoom in a lot, try to present the uniqueness of each site.” Lara Almarcegui bundles the information she gathers in Guides, brochures that present the past, present, and future of the vacant lots—some had been put to public, some to private uses—in an objective and matter-of-fact fashion.
Lara Almarcegui, installation view: Construction Rubble of Secession's Main Hall, 2010, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler
Like her other Guides, the brochure Brachflächen am Nordbahnhof, Wien / Wastelands at Nordbahnhof, Vienna, steers clear of romanticizing any sort of patina, of a sentimental view of the past. The derelict areas Lara Almarcegui studies are located on the grounds of the Nordbahnhof railway station in Vienna’s 2nd district. Once the Habsburg monarchy’s largest and most important railway station, the Nordbahnhof sustained massive damage in World War II; it was finally demolished in the 1960s. Where a paraffin depot and old coal-yards stood, nature is now slowly reconquering the land. According to the general development concept for the area from 1994, a request for proposals for detailed urban development plans will be issued in 2012. The concept calls for the creation of residential buildings, while part of the area will be retained as recreational green space. In her Guides, Lara Almarcegui documents the current undefined state of an area in transition. “I always think it is good to know what is going on in urban planning in a city. Wastelands are important because they are the only places in the city that remain without definition. Untouched by design, everything that takes place in them happens by chance and not according to a plan. […] I see great value in this lack of a design, and that is why I would like to ‘preserve’ these wastelands in my works, if that is possible and makes sense,” the artist says.
Lara Almarcegui, installation view: Construction Rubble of Secession's Main Hall, 2010, Photo: Wolfgang Thaler
For the duration of the exhibition, the brochure Brachflächen am Nordbahnhof, Wien / Wastelands at Nordbahnhof, Vienna will be available in the lobby at the Secession and at the neighbourhood management office in the 2nd district (Max-Winter-Platz 23). Visitors are invited to explore the area around the Nordbahnhof and to form their own picture. But, the artist also says, “even if people never go to the Nordbahnhof, they now know that these wastelands exist and have specific information.”
Lara Almarcegui renders visible what we otherwise fail to regard, see, or notice. She deconstructs in order to uncover—including a view of the utopia of the future. In Bauschutt Hauptraum Secession / Construction Rubble of Secession's Main Hall, Lara Almarcegui takes stock of the construction materials used to build the main hall of the exhibition building by heaping up piles of these materials—all products of recycling processes—a work that also considers a vision of a possible future use. The exhibition hall with its aura is transmuted into shapeless heaps. What would happen with these tons of concrete, wood, terrazzo, brick, mortar, glass, plaster, polystyrene, and steel if they were to return into the circulation of the construction industry? Which new constructions might arise out of the materials that now constitute the Secession’s main hall?
Lara Almarcegui’s work for the Secession represents an elaboration of earlier works. In 2003, she analyzed the FRAC building in Dijon, representing it with new materials. In 2006, she calculated the total amount of various construction materials in the entire city of São Paulo, exhibiting the results as a chart during the São Paulo Biennial: a condensed representation of facts, supported by solid research, on a single sheet of paper displaying, in a tangle of numbers, what holds an entire city together; buildings, areas, and construction supplies as the material basis not only of the built structure but also of an organism of social structures that pervades them—and fills them with meaning.
Lara Almarcegui, installation view: Removal of the Wooden Floor, Grafisches Kabinett, Secession, 2010, Fotos: Oliver Ottenschläger
A poetic work awaits visitors in the Grafisches Kabinett. Here, too, the artist has uncovered: in a quiet process concealed from the public, she has performed a Removal of the Wooden Floor / Abtragen des Parkettbodens, Grafisches Kabinett Secession and then reconstructed the floor. “The question was not so much: What can I do to improve a certain place?, but rather: What can I learn from this place?,” the artist says. What remains is the documentation of an almost invisible process and the recognition on the part of visitors that they are at—are standing on—the very scene of this process. Their attention is turned to what underlies it—it is no longer accessible—and to a process that has come to a conclusion and nonetheless remains present.
With her current show at the Secession, Lara Almarcegui draws a connecting line from outdoors to indoors and from inside to even deeper inside. A dialectic of visibility emerges, and a dynamic that also informs everyday processes in the urban space. What Lara Almarcegui says about her work in the Grafisches Kabinett may serve as a description of her exhibition as a
whole: “I work outside in the city and begin to approach the exhibition space with a critical eye. Removing the floor is my way of learning more about the place, of connecting the space to the building, to the materials, the past, and the urban structure.”
Curated by Jeanette Pacher and Annette Südbeck
WORKS ON SHOW IN THE EXHIBITION
Brachflächen am Nordbahnhof, Wien / Wastelands at Nordbahnhof, Vienna, 2010
Bauschutt Hauptraum Secession / Construction Rubble of Secession's Main Hall, 2010
Abtragen des Parkettbodens, Grafisches Kabinett Secession / Removal of the Wooden Floor, Grafisches Kabinett Secession, 2010
CATALOGUE
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LARA ALMARCEGUI 96 pages, dimension: 16,5 x 22,2 cm, about 80 color illustrations Authors: Lara Almarcegui, Anna Minton, German/English Secession 2010, ISBN 978-3-902592-34-7 Distribution: Revolver Verlag ___________________ available in the shop |
LARA ALMARCEGUI
Lara Almarcegui (*1972 in Zaragoza, Spain) lives and works in Rotterdam.
Solo shows (selection)
2010
Lara Almarcegui, Secession, Wien / Vienna
Lara Almarcegui, LUDLOW 38, New York
Art Basel: Statements, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Basel
2008
Ruinas de Holanda, Pepe Cobo Gallery, Madrid
Ruins in Nederlands, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam
Guide to the wastelands of the Bilbao river estuary, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao
2007
Lara Almarcegui, CGAC-Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela
Lara Almarcegui, La Box ENSA, Bourges
Lara Almarcegui, CAC-Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga
2004
Lara Almarcegui, FRAC-Fonds régional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne, Dijon
2003
Lara Almarcegui, INDEX-The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm
Lara Almarcegui, Centre D’Art Le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire
Group shows (selection)
2010
Taipei Biennale 2010, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipeh / Taipei
Portscapes, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
The Garden of Forking Paths, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul
El Angel Exterminador – A Room for Spanish Contemporary Art, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brüssel / Brussels
MADRID ABIERTO 2010, Madrid
2009
3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moskau / Moscow
Utopie und Monument, Steirischer Herbst, Graz
Flüchtige Zeiten, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster
5x5Castelló09, Espai d’art contemporani de Castello, Castello
Radical Nature - Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009, Barbican Art Center, London
Athens Splendid Isolation, 2nd Athens Biennale, Athen / Athens
Monument to transformation, City Gallery / tranzit.cz, Prag / Prague
Flux/S, Eindhoven
2008
(A)Pesanteur, Récits Sans Gravité, FRAC-Fonds régional d'art contemporain de Lorraine, Metz
Taipei Biennale 2008, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipeh / Taipei
Annual Report: A Year In Exhibitions, 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju
The Museum as Medium, MARCO-Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo
5th Lofoten International Art Festival, Svolvaer
Matiere à Paysage, Biennale de la Seine, La Gallerie, Noissy-le-Sec
Greenwashing: Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
Estratos, PAC-Proyecto Arte Contemporáneo, Murcia
2007
Existencias, MUSAC-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
Mimetic, Centre d´art de l´Yonne, Auxerre
Sharjah Art Biennial 8: Still life, Art, Ecology and Politics of Change, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah
Mapas, Cosmogonias e Puntos de Referencia, CGAC - Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela
2006
The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society, BIACS 2nd - Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Sevilla
Frieze Projects, 4th Frieze Art Fair, London
Como viver junto - How to live together, 27 Bienniale of São Paulo, São Paulo
Theater of Life, Galeria Civica d’arte Contemporanea, Trient / Trento
2005
Buenos Dias Santiago, MAC-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile
Project Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Le Génie du lieu, FRAC-Fonds régional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne, Dijon
Offentlig Handling (Public Ac)t. Lara Almarcegui, Sean Snyder, Darius Ziura, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Lunds Konsthall, Lund
2004
3rd Liverpool Biennial 2004, Liverpool
Common Property / Allgemeingut, 6. Werkleitz Biennale, Halle
Le proche et le lointain, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan
LAB, Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo
Catastrofi Minime, MAN-Museo di Arte Provincia di Nuoro, Nuoro
Projects in public space
2009
Evento 2009: Collective Intimacy, Bordeaux
2008
One Day Sculpture, Wellington
Village Green, PAV-Parc Arte Vivente, Turin
2005
Delicious, Sint-Truiden
2006
Het braakliggend terrein van de Norfolkline open voor het publiek, Den Haag
2003
Allotment Gardens, Urban Festival, Zagreb
Een brakliggend terrein, Rijkswaterstadt, Rotterdam
2002
Wastelands Tour, British Architectural Week, Liverpool
Lost Past, Ypern / Ypres
2000
Opening of a wasteland, Container Project Nicc, Brüssel / Brussels
Guides
2010
Guide to the wastelands of Flushing river, Queens, New York City, hrsg. von / edited by Ludlow 38, Goethe Institute New York, European Kunsthalle, Köln / Cologne
2009
Guide to the Wastelands of the Lea Valley, 12 Empty Spaces Await the London Olympics, hrsg. von / edited by Barbican Art Centre, London
Ruins in Bourgogne XIX-XXI, hrsg. von / edited by Le Press du Réel & FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon
Wastelands of the Port of Rotterdam, hrsg. von / edited by SKOR, Amsterdam& Port of Rotterdam Authority
A wasteland on the banks of the Ebro River, Zaragoza, hrsg. von / edited by CDAN, Huesca
A Wasteland in the Shenzhen River, hrsg. von / edited by Shenzhen Hong Kong, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture
2008
Ruins in the Netherlands XIX- XXI, hrsg. von / edited by Episode Publishers, Rotterdam
Guide to the wastelands along the Bilbao River Estuary, hrsg. von / edited by Sala Rekalde, Bilbao
An empty terrain in the Danshui River, Taipei, hrsg. von / edited by Taipei Biennale
2007
Guide to Al Khan, An empty village in the city of Sharjah, hrsg. von / edited by Sharjah Art Biennial
An Invitation to Visit the Fontiñas Wasteland before its Construction, hrsg. von / edited by CGAC, Santiago de Compostela
2006
Guide to the wastelands of São Paulo, a selection of the most interesting empty places in the city, hrsg. von / edited by Biennial São Paulo
1999
Wastelands Map Amsterdam, a guide to the empty sites of the city, hrsg. von / edited by Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam
Further Information/Links:
Morton, Tom “City Limits: Lara Almarcegui” in: FRIEZE. Contemporary Art and Culture. Berlin, 108/ Summer 2007
Ellen de Bruijne Project, see: http://www.edbprojects.nl/?lara-almarcegui,162
Brodie, Jane / Llorca, Pablo “Lara Almarcegui. Galeria Pepe Cobo“ in: ART FORUM, Februar 2009, see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_47/ai_n48839758/
www.annaminton.com
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For further information and photographic material please contact:
Tamara Schwarzmayr
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at