Generations Exhibition: The Dean of Non-State Aid to Young Artists in Its 24th Edition

On the other hand, in addition to being equal, like any call for young people for decades – although now they prefer to be called “they”, as the Portuguese João Mourão and Luís Silva, members of the jury, refer in the catalog text –, in the exhibition This year, the majority participation of artists stands out millennialsSpaniards and residents in our country, descendants of other latitudes and cultures, Afro, Asian and Latin American. It was time.

But does this selection respond to what those who are called to join the art system are doing? After the avalanche of “new contemporary art” in the ARCO satellite fairs, it is evident that the international jury of Generations, made up of directors and curators in museums and art centers, without being carried away by the sociological media, has acted more like the old guard that He still believes in separating the criteria of institutional quality from populist market fashion. Unlike the last editions, not a single piece that we could have seen in Urvanity, JustMad o Hybrid has sneaked in.

The speeches about identities, experiential and collective memory and cases investigated in archives of economic and colonial production and exploitation, covered with formal post-minimal and deconstructive strategies, They form a coherent mosaic, with well-finished projects even with academic overtones, thanks to the payment of ten thousand euros with which some of these artists have been able to grow in the resolution of their pieces. Maturity in your ambition, however, is also measured by the reasonable calculation of means and dimensions.

In this sense, it seems appropriate clean Amparo installation, in homage to the Lavapiés neighborhood, traditionally a place where migrants are welcomed, by An Wei (Madrid, 1990). While the resolution in food art of the powerful nostalgic evocation of Agnes Essonti Luque (Barcelona, ​​1998). And decidedly grandiloquent is the installation by Daniel De La Barra (Lima, 1992) on the extractivism imposed in Francoist Spain. Focuses on means of production under a colonial economic structure that continues, in the other room, in a curious historical case, of relative interest, with the elegant proposal of Raúl Silva (Lima, 1991), with a video, however, that perhaps it does not fully explain the extension of its interest to the present.

The works form a coherent mosaic, with well-finished projects even with academic overtones.

In fact, in that larger room There is an assembly problem due to which, among several projections, the sculptural proposals of Weixin Quek Chong (Singapore, 1988), around the origin and use of rubber and latex, and of Irati Inoriza (Balmaseda, 1992) are confused., about the mythological figure of the “lamia” to suggest a complex approach to identity, very pregnant. From such damage, only the video installation by Salem Amar (Barcelona, ​​1999) is saved, with a surprising purely aestheticist perspective on mental illnesses.

According to the curators, who have allocated a unique space, the maturity of Milena Rossignoli (Quito, 1990) stands out, of whom we were able to see a small sculpture in this ARCO, in the Ana Mas Project gallery. His original formal investigation into the resistance and balance of materials in an uncertain space that focuses on voids is well supported by a discourse that goes beyond elegant ad hoc oriental quotations, although they serve to translate the pure sculptural process in an affordable and effective way. Sublime, vulnerability and control, and suggestive temporal and geographical layers are condensed in this perfectly completed work with which the artist takes an important step forward.