Monday, 22 June 2015, 6 pm
Espacio represivo: Buenos Aires, New York, Hamburg
Artist talk with Horacio Zabala in Spanish language with consecutive interpretation into German
In his artistic work Horacio Zabala approaches conceptual and formal variations, reorientations and recontex-tualizations. He is interested in the relationships between things and formats and the underlying ideas and concepts.
Espacio represivo was initially the title of a drawing for a public sculpture, which reflected on the conditions of a right-wing military dictatorship. In 1973 the work was shown for the first time as a gallery installation in Zabala’s solo exhibition Anteproyectos at the Centro de Arte y Communication in Buenos Aires and in 2014 reinstalled at the gallery Henrique Faria Fine Art in New York. On occasion of the summer program of Stadtkuratorin Hamburg* (until July 30, 2015) the work can be seen for the first time as public sculpture in urban space.
In the context of censorship and persecution Zabala addresses the prison as part of a panoptic power relation and the boundaries generated by certain architectural components and materiality, as inclusions and exclusions. In his lecture he asks how the meaning of an art work maybe changes over time and through the different context and how the spectator should convey the intention of the artistic work in urban space.
Horacio Zabala (b. in 1943 in Buenos Aires / Argentina) studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires and emigrated to Europe after the military coup in 1976, where he lived for 22 years in Rome, Vienna, and Geneva. Today he lives and works in Buenos Aires. Through minimal visual languages and heterogeneous media his work critically explores the social and aesthetic contexts of information and fiction. From 1972 to 1976 he was a member of the progressive artists group Grupo de los Trece. Exhibitions (selection): Mu-seum of Fine Arts, Boston (2014); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012); Henrique Faría, New York | Buenos Ai-res, New York (2009); MALBA Buenos Aires (2005); Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (1996, 1998).