Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary opens new office in Madrid September 12, 2019
Cecilia Bengolea, rehersals for DesertX, collaboration with Rudi Gernreich. Photo: Neville Wakefield
Past
EN / ES
Open House is a performative multidisciplinary inaugural live event on Thursday September 12, 2019 unveiling the official Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) Madrid office located in the Barrio de las Letras.The evening program highlights the practice of Argentinian-born Paris-Based artist, dancer and choreographer Cecilia Bengolea. Through livestream technology visitors get an exclusive sneak peek into the state of Bengolea’s new video "DANCEHALL ELEVATION", 2019, currently in production and development in Kingston, Jamaica. Additionally, there is a live, in-person performance by Jamaican-born Paris-Based dancer and choreographer Craig Black Eagle. He is one of Bengolea’s collaborators and one of the main protagonists featured in Bengola’s video work "Lightning Dance", 2018, a powerfully charged video filmed during a period of severe floods in Spanish Town, Jamaica, which traces the power of weather and how it can electrify the body and be harnessed and re-expressed through dance. This 6-minute film was co-produced by TBA21 and is now housed within the collection, and is on display for the night of the event and the following day, Friday September 13, during Apertura. Open House, composed of the work-in-progress preview, live performance and accompanying film screening, offers a contextual artistic presentation and gives a glimpse into the mechanics of the ambitious commissioning process commonly at work within the foundation, and the types of genre-defying, trans-national collaborative practices that TBA21 fosters into being. It is as much the process as the final work that TBA21 seeks to make public and share here with its Madrileno audience.
"DANCEHALL ELEVATION", 2019, the central work featured in the event’s live-streamed sneak peek, is an extensive video commission and one of many pieces in Bengolea’s oeuvre that centres on dancehall and its surrounding culture. This popular Jamaican style of music and dance, imbued with an intensity of gestural expression and sexuality, is a practice that, for the artist, seems to possess the potential to heal and transform. The film in progress has been produced in collaboration with the Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC), and its final version premiers on December 1st designed by Jean Nouvel to be installed on a large scale screen and on display for a full year. The streamed portion carefully selected for the evening in Madrid will offer never-before-seen, newly captured filmic passages, ranging from drone shots of synchronized swimmers to various segments of dance rehearsals both live and pre-recorded, all of which are broadcast from Kingston, Jamaica, where the artist is currently working and researching. Bengolea’s work aligns with and ventures directly into the community in the surrounding regions, enlisting many local dancers as collaborators. They construct the work together, and this aspect of social exchange is crucial for the type of dance she features, and for the film itself.
In addition to the showcasing of Bengolea’s vibrant work, this meet and greet serves as an opportunity to open up and welcome the general public into the office and to officially introduce members of the newly assembled Madrid team. Having a brick and mortar office in the Spanish capital marks the foundation’s dedication to the development of the local art scene, in Madrid and in Spain at large. Already in progress is an ongoing exhibition program in partnership with The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, which comprises of exhibitions and additional public programming surrounding two large-scale exhibitions per year, currently agreed upon for at least the next four years. "More-than-humans", a two-person exhibition by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tomás Saraceno curated by Stefanie Hessler will be the next in the series set to open at the MNTB on September 24th. TBA21 is also in collaboration with Loop Barcelona to present a reconfigured video piece by artists Mariana Silva and Pedro Neves Marques called The Inhabitants, that traces the adverse effects of deep sea mining. Stemming from the foundations collaboration with MNTB this office space serves as a hub related to, but distinct from, the Museum, as a modest space for the TBA21 Madrid team to research, plan and maintain administration as well as a site of experimentation and display. This Open House program showcases the latter in an evening of less orthodox exchange, very much in the spirit of much of TBA21’s output. We hereby welcome you to join us and partake in this new chapter in TBA21’s trajectory.
Work details:
Cecilia Bengolea
Lightning Dance, 2018
Single-channel video installation, b/w, sound
6 min 3 sec
Commissioned by Vinyl Factory, Stromboli Extravaganza
Co-produced by Vlovajob P.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Additionally, a selection of works from the collection by Walid Raad will be featured in adjacent space in the office, and thus on view during Open House.
These archival inkjets on archival paper by Walid Raad are all part of his project Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: In 2007 Walid Raad initiated the art project Scratching on Things I Could Disavow about the history of art in the "Arab World", which leans on the recent emergence of a large new infrastructure for the visual arts in the "Arab World". These developments, when viewed alongside the geo-political, economic, social, and military conflicts that have consumed the region in the past few decades, shape a rich yet thorny ground for creative work. With Scratching on Things I Could Disavow, Raad heeds the constraints and possibilities of this ground. A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. Part 1_Chapter 1 Section 271: Appendix XVIII: is part of this project.
Open House is a performative multidisciplinary inaugural live event on Thursday September 12, 2019 unveiling the official Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) Madrid office located in the Barrio de las Letras.The evening program highlights the practice of Argentinian-born Paris-Based artist, dancer and choreographer Cecilia Bengolea. Through livestream technology visitors get an exclusive sneak peek into the state of Bengolea’s new video "DANCEHALL ELEVATION", 2019, currently in production and development in Kingston, Jamaica. Additionally, there is a live, in-person performance by Jamaican-born Paris-Based dancer and choreographer Craig Black Eagle. He is one of Bengolea’s collaborators and one of the main protagonists featured in Bengola’s video work "Lightning Dance", 2018, a powerfully charged video filmed during a period of severe floods in Spanish Town, Jamaica, which traces the power of weather and how it can electrify the body and be harnessed and re-expressed through dance. This 6-minute film was co-produced by TBA21 and is now housed within the collection, and is on display for the night of the event and the following day, Friday September 13, during Apertura. Open House, composed of the work-in-progress preview, live performance and accompanying film screening, offers a contextual artistic presentation and gives a glimpse into the mechanics of the ambitious commissioning process commonly at work within the foundation, and the types of genre-defying, trans-national collaborative practices that TBA21 fosters into being. It is as much the process as the final work that TBA21 seeks to make public and share here with its Madrileno audience.
"DANCEHALL ELEVATION", 2019, the central work featured in the event’s live-streamed sneak peek, is an extensive video commission and one of many pieces in Bengolea’s oeuvre that centres on dancehall and its surrounding culture. This popular Jamaican style of music and dance, imbued with an intensity of gestural expression and sexuality, is a practice that, for the artist, seems to possess the potential to heal and transform. The film in progress has been produced in collaboration with the Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC), and its final version premiers on December 1st designed by Jean Nouvel to be installed on a large scale screen and on display for a full year. The streamed portion carefully selected for the evening in Madrid will offer never-before-seen, newly captured filmic passages, ranging from drone shots of synchronized swimmers to various segments of dance rehearsals both live and pre-recorded, all of which are broadcast from Kingston, Jamaica, where the artist is currently working and researching. Bengolea’s work aligns with and ventures directly into the community in the surrounding regions, enlisting many local dancers as collaborators. They construct the work together, and this aspect of social exchange is crucial for the type of dance she features, and for the film itself.
In addition to the showcasing of Bengolea’s vibrant work, this meet and greet serves as an opportunity to open up and welcome the general public into the office and to officially introduce members of the newly assembled Madrid team. Having a brick and mortar office in the Spanish capital marks the foundation’s dedication to the development of the local art scene, in Madrid and in Spain at large. Already in progress is an ongoing exhibition program in partnership with The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, which comprises of exhibitions and additional public programming surrounding two large-scale exhibitions per year, currently agreed upon for at least the next four years. "More-than-humans", a two-person exhibition by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tomás Saraceno curated by Stefanie Hessler will be the next in the series set to open at the MNTB on September 24th. TBA21 is also in collaboration with Loop Barcelona to present a reconfigured video piece by artists Mariana Silva and Pedro Neves Marques called The Inhabitants, that traces the adverse effects of deep sea mining. Stemming from the foundations collaboration with MNTB this office space serves as a hub related to, but distinct from, the Museum, as a modest space for the TBA21 Madrid team to research, plan and maintain administration as well as a site of experimentation and display. This Open House program showcases the latter in an evening of less orthodox exchange, very much in the spirit of much of TBA21’s output. We hereby welcome you to join us and partake in this new chapter in TBA21’s trajectory.
Work details:
Cecilia Bengolea
Lightning Dance, 2018
Single-channel video installation, b/w, sound
6 min 3 sec
Commissioned by Vinyl Factory, Stromboli Extravaganza
Co-produced by Vlovajob P.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Additionally, a selection of works from the collection by Walid Raad will be featured in adjacent space in the office, and thus on view during Open House.
These archival inkjets on archival paper by Walid Raad are all part of his project Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: In 2007 Walid Raad initiated the art project Scratching on Things I Could Disavow about the history of art in the "Arab World", which leans on the recent emergence of a large new infrastructure for the visual arts in the "Arab World". These developments, when viewed alongside the geo-political, economic, social, and military conflicts that have consumed the region in the past few decades, shape a rich yet thorny ground for creative work. With Scratching on Things I Could Disavow, Raad heeds the constraints and possibilities of this ground. A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. Part 1_Chapter 1 Section 271: Appendix XVIII: is part of this project.