SOFACQ Gallery
SPAin
Alberto corazon
1942 - Madrid
Alberto Corazón Climent is a Spanish designer, photographer, sculptor and painter. He took part in the first stages of the "conceptual art" that the Redor Gallery organized in Spain in the early 1970s.
He made his first exhibitions in "alternative spaces" and continues to show his work in Europe (Italy and Germany) and will be present at the 1976 Venice Biennale with Tàpies and Equipo Crónica. Two years later, he is invited to the Biennale of Paris to exhibit at the Petit Palais with Antonio Saura. His last contribution to the idea of art took place at the Alexander Iolas Gallery in New York in 1979 with the anthology project entitled 'Read Image 3'. He begins the century with an anthology in the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid "Alberto Corazón, paintings and sculptures 1992-2002", which will take place soon in Spain. In 2003, he was present in the exhibition "Spanish Art for the Outside", organized by SEACEX-Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for cultural institutions in Syria, Jordan and Iran.
The year 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Madrid has mounted the retrospective "Alberto Corazón, Plaza Mayor and other conceptual works of the 70s". In 2013 "Working with Signs: Alberto Corazón's Drawings", an anthology exhibition from 1963 to 2013, visited several Spanish museums.
Corazon Alberto, Mesa del pintor Alberto Corazon (Observaciones), 2016.
Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 700 cm.
Emilio lopez-menchero
1960 - Spain
In his work, the Belgian-Spanish artist Emilio Lopez-Menchero (° 1960) examines various questions about identity in many ways: that of the artist to himself, that of the artist at the heart of society. From his social commitment he tries to disprove myths and clichés.
Lopez-Menchero Emilio, In Balzac Mind, 2011.
Oil on canvas, 65 x 75cm.
Lopez-Menchero Emilio, Le grand Capital, 2012.
Oil on canvas, 68 x 53cm.
Lopez-Menchero Emilio, Serie Laethem, 2005.
105 drawings, ink on paper, (105x) 32,5 x 23,5cm.
Enrique marty
1969 - Salamanca
Enrique Marty’s (°1969 in Salamanca, Spain) oeuvre consists of sculptures, paintings, watercolours, videos and animations. As a whole, it reads as an exploration of the human soul. Stylistically, Marty finds his source in the characteristics of amateur imagery, mass communication and popular narrative techniques, while his methodology is based on the endless recording and reproduction of private experiences and everyday life. The artist does not interpret, but rather records.
Marty’s work is sort of an encyclopedia of the so-called everyday life, a comédie humaine with dark passages. On the one hand Enrique Marty’s sculptures are three-dimensional portraits, based on moulds of real people. Yet they also connect doll-like aspects to those of statues of Western figurative sculptural traditions, including the Baroque.
Enrique Marty’s unique approach attracted great attention for the first time in Spain with his solo show ‘La Familia’ in Espacio Uno, the then space for young art of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, in 2001. In 2004, Harald Szeemann selected him for ‘The Real Royal Trip’, in which Szeemann introduced the contemporary art of the Spanish-speaking countries on the international scene. The exhibition travelled from PS1 New York to the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid. Marty became one of the most outstanding personalities in Spanish contemporary art, which led to a sensational solo exhibition in the MUSAC in Leon in 2006: ‘Flaschengeist / La Caseta del Alemàn’, curated by Rafael Doctor Roncero. Shortly afterwards, Enrique Marty was first shown, still in 2006, in Belgium by Deweer Gallery, with the solo show ‘Aim at the Brood!’. The cooperation with Deweer Gallery led to institutional solos at the GEM / Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (2008), the Kunsthalle Mannheim (2010), and the Fundacion Antonio Perez in Cuenca, Spain (2011). After ‘Dank and Dismal’ in 2009, he brought his third solo show ‘Sainte Guillotine’ at Deweer Gallery in 2010. In 2011, the gallery presented Marty solo at Art Brussels with the installation ‘Art Is Dangerous’. The artist’s fourth solo show at Deweer, ‘Soft Cockney’, was presented, together with an eponymous catalogue, in 2013. Marty took part in several important group shows, including the Venice Biennale in 2001 and 2005. He was selected for the exhibition on Spanish post-war art ‘Spain. 1957-2007’, in the Palazzo Sant’Elia (Palermo, Italy), for ‘L’Art en Europe’ in the Domaine Pommery (Reims, France, 2008), for ‘Spanish Video Art’ at ZKM in Karlsruhe (2008), and ‘Hareng Saur – Ensor and Contemporary Art’ at S.M.A.K. and Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (2010), among others. In 2011, he took part in the group exhibition ‘GOLD MINE’, with works from the collection of Sirje and Michael Gold, at CSULB, Long Beach, USA.
Marty Enrique, Aim at the brood! / Shame, humiliation, ..., 2006.
Oil paint on MDF, 100 x 100 cm.
Marty Enrique, Aim at the brood! / Shame, humiliation, ... (1/2), 2006.
Oil paint on MDF, 2 x (50 x 50 cm).
Marty Enrique, Aim at the brood! / Shame, humiliation, ... (2/2), 2006.
Oil paint on MDF, 2 x (50 x 50 cm).
Sierra Santiago
1966 - Madrid
For the past two decades, Santiago Sierra has carried out provocative actions around the world. Influenced by the formal language of the minimal and conceptual art movements of the 1960s and 70s, Santiago Sierra’s work addresses the hierarchies of power and class that operate in our modern society and everyday existence.
Sierra became well known for his actions in which underprivileged or marginalised individuals were hired to perform menial or pointless tasks in exchange for money. Pieces such as Person paid to have a 30 cm line tattooed on them, Regina Street # 51, Mexico City, May 1998 (1998) or 8 people paid to remain inside cardboard boxes, G&T Building. Guatemala City, August 1999 (1999) underline the situations of labourers’ exploitation, isolation, and repression within capitalist structures.
By transforming individuals into consumer goods, Sierra also highlights current socio-political issues while challenging the intrinsic mechanisms of reality. As a result, the essence of his work can often be found exemplified in the tension that is generated and sustained between the ephemeral performance, its documentation, and the spectator. The latter is hence exposed to the edges of morality and permissibility, but also to the formal and poetic articulation of the voices of those who are ordinarily invisible or unheard.
Sierra Santiago, Removal of a museum's glass windows, 2004.
5 documents,5x (21 x 29,7 cm).
juanan soria
1985 - ES
The project Desencanto is based on the ironic reinterpretation of the contemporary scene by creating narratives packed with symbolic elements which help to regurgitate the consequences of a Europe in crisis. Concepts like the social and the political, tradition and identity, mythology and religion interact, oppose or stand beside each other in an open working space. Media like painting, drawing and animation contribute to confound the limits, to allow reality to dance on the border with the fictitious and to let the rhythm wipe that border.
Soria Juanan, Desencanto, 2012.
127 drawings, video.