The IVAM celebrates its 30 anniversary in this 2019 recently released and we have asked its curators and director to tell us about that exhibition experienced in the first person that, for some reason, They consider that it was important in the history of the museum.
Paris Years 30: abstract art, concrete art, abstraction creation [1990]
Teresa Millet (Conservative since 1988)
Curated by Gladys Fabre, expert in the classical avant-garde of the 20th century, Paris 1930It was the first large temporary exhibition with international loans organized by the IVAM. I remember moments of great happiness when the mail arrived (Yeah, Yeah, postal mail) with positive responses to our loan requests. It was an ambitious project that included a total of 267 works by many of the artists who came together in the effervescent art scene of the Parisian capital, and to whom the IVAM later dedicated individual exhibitions, and from which works were also acquired for the permanent collection.
The modern city. Rationalist architecture in Valencia [1998]
Maita Cañamás (Conservative since 1998)
Curated by architects Juan Lagardera and Armando Llopis, proposed a documentary investigation on Valencian architecture between 1927 y 1946. The exhibition included models, original plans, photographs, graphic archives of the time as well as rationalist furniture, which were shown for the first time outside of their original locations. It was complemented by a photographic tour made for the occasion by the artist Javier Campano and a series of works by the painter and draftsman Marcelo Fuentes., and Canadian photographer Ian Wallace. A catalog was published in two volumes that included, in addition to specialized texts, a guide-selection of sixty rationalist buildings as well as a brief biographical summary of thirty architects active in Valencia in those years.
James Turrell [2004]
Irene Bonilla Sancho
(Conservative since 2002)
One of the exhibitions that has had the greatest impact on me both personally and professionally is that of James Turrell. It was inaugurated on 14 December 2004 and was closed in February 2005. Although I knew the artist and had read about his work, I never imagined that I would be able to enjoy five interventions by the American artist in the museum. I remember seeing the artist himself, elderly, taking care of every detail of the assembly. His work is a striking aesthetic and sensory experience.. The visitor is the one who decides where to stand in the exhibition space, because there is no image, there is no specific point to look at; just some leftovers, a spectrum of light that appears to change or transform the space as the eye becomes accustomed to the lighting installation. Turrell created four new installations for the IVAM exhibition. The catalog brings together a wide compendium of his work and includes interesting statements by the artist.
Building new worlds: the historical avant-garde in the IVAM collection [2015]
Josep Salvador (Conservative since 1989)
An extensive selection of his funds from the historical avant-garde (dadaism, futurism, constructivism, neoplasticismo, abstraction, functionalism and surrealism) which occupied two of its main galleries and which marked the beginning of a series of thematic reviews of the collection with the intention of opening a collective debate on the relationship between art and its time.. In this first approach, the focus was on the first decades of the 20th century., when a whirlwind of events occurred that in the artistic field gave rise to a debate on the binomial art and life that still continues to be an incentive for experimentation.
At the core of this irresolvable dialectic between realism and abstraction we find cubism and its defense of the multiple and unstable character of plastic creation.. This path opened to the essential tool of the imagination and its ability to combine and relate concepts has been defined as emblematic in the search for new meanings through the transformative potential inherent in the artistic principles of metaphor and allegory..
This critical analysis of a singular and outstanding part of the collection, with the presence of leading figures of the creative scene of this period such as Duchamp, Man Ray, Grosz y Heartfield, Picabia, the Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Stepanova and Rodchenko, Kulagina, Clump, Lissitzly, Moholy-Nagy, Julio González, The Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Naum Gabo, Calder and Josep Renau among others, incorporated a thematic structure focused on the most experimental and interpretive aspects of the artistic phenomenon and reinforced its dialogic approach with examples of other facets of cultural production of the moment such as design, cinema and literature.
Between myth and horror. The Mediterranean as a conflict [2016]
Jose Miguel G. Cortés (Director of IVAM since 2014)
This exhibition responds to one of the central lines of the IVAM's work in recent years: the study and analysis of the cultural and social roots that come together in the Mediterranean Sea. In it, artists from different countries on both shores reflected (far from Manichean positions) about the set of ways of understanding the relationship and coexistence of this geographical area. The works in the exhibition had the ability to open our minds, to value the aspects we have in common or to understand the vision of others and, therefore, to make ourselves richer personally and culturally.
Dora Garcia. Artificial respiration. Dark Echo Performance [2016]
Marta Arroyo Planelles (Conservative since 1995)
Artificial respiration. Performance. Dark Echois the specific project carried out for the IVAM by Dora García in collaboration with Peio Aguirre and that arises from a long conversation between the two about the nature of performance, of the performance, of the doubles, of the representation, and also, on the transmission of knowledge and experience. It was the first time that the performance entered the IVAM as a temporary exhibition in rooms for three months and with a triple publication accompanied by a poster. The performance Artificial respirationIt was developed during the weekends by the participants of the workshop given by Dora García at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and in which she proposed a drift through the city of Valencia from which the recited texts emerged.; the play written by Peio Aguirre, Performance, It was performed every Friday during the exhibition period by the theater students of the Valencian school Off Performing Arts. The unpublished novel by Francisco Baena Dark EchoIt was the third publication and was presented in the room with annotations by Dora García.
Fake. It's not true, it's not a lie [2017]
Joan Ramon Escrivà (Conservative since 1989)
We live in times in which the truth is undervalued. In a world where scammers seem to roam freely, the white-collar tricksters and the tricksters of the image and the word, the exhibition Fake. It's not true, it's not a lie, tackled brilliantly, through a set of guerrilla artistic practices, the unmasking of power falsification strategies entrenched in institutions such as the University, Science, Journalism or the Museum itself.
Against time. Half a century of Valencian artists (1929-1979) [2018]
María Jesús Folch (Conservative since 2001)
The exhibition recreated the path that Valencian artists took to achieve their visibility and professionalization since the end of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Second Republic – a moment of true emergence of women in public life., passing through the Franco regime – a period in which it was paralyzed – until the eighties – when its integration experienced a strong consolidation. A journey in which the political and social commitment of the artists involved a double militancy: the political situation they had to live in and the fact of being women in a society that discriminated against them and treated them as second-class citizens..
Up to level of affection. Patricia Gómez and MªJesús González [2018]
Sandra Moros Sides (Conservative since 2016)
This specific project for the gallery 6 It meant a review of the history of the IVAM and also of the cultural policies of the Valencian Community, something necessary to know where we come from and where we want to go and that turned the room into an archaeological excavation. It was very interesting how the artists made visible the different layers of paint trapped during the 30 years of life of the IVAM materializing time and its circumstances (historical, economic, policies, cultural…). What is notable about this project is the research process not only in the museum's internal archives, but with the people who make up the IVAM team, a very enriching work on oral memory for the artists and for me as curator.
Elisa. Pepe Miralles [2018]
Sergio Rubira (Deputy Director General of Collection and Exhibitions since 2017)
Elisa is the exhibition device that Pepe Miralles has developed as part of a much broader project titled Effect of a force applied suddenly,in which he investigates and generates an archive on the impact that HIV/AIDS had, and still has, in the community of men who have sex with men in Valencia. The effect of a force applied suddenly shows how the museum can work in a way that goes beyond the exhibition itself.. It is a project in which the processes, training, Research and collaboration with different communities in the context closest to IVAM are essential.
