On & on

La Casa Encendida, Madrid
Ronda Valencia, 2
November 19th 2010 – January 16th 2011
lacasaencendida.es

Opening on 18th November 2010

There was a rare snowfall in Florence in the winter of 1494. The new ruler of the city, Piero de Medici, ordered the young Michelangelo, a great favourite with his predecessor, to go out into the courtyard and sculpt him a snowman. This, the now famous story of one of art history’s most unusual commissions, is commonly… cited as an example of a patron’s abuse: the young sculptor’s talent, it is often considered, was completely wasted on an ephemeral piece. And yet Michelangelo’s snowman was said by his contemporaries to have been a fabulous creation. It lives on in art history, glittering in the memory as among this master’s finest works.
(Extract from Rachel Campbell Johnston’s essay for the on&on catalogue).

La Casa Encendida is pleased to present on&on, an exhibition that brings together 14 international artists showing mostly site-specific works, all exploring the ephemeral in art.
The artists taking part in the exhibition are:

* MICHEL BLAZY.
* CÉLESTE BOURSIER MOUGENOT.
* MARTIN CREED.
* ELOISE FORNIELES.
* ANYA GALLACCIO.
* ANDY GOLDSWORTHY.
* KITTY KRAUS.
* CLAIRE MORGAN.
* TINO SEHGAL.
* CHIHARU SHIOTA.
* ROMAN SIGNER.
* STEINER AND LENZLINGER.
* GREGORIO ZANON.

The curators Flora Fairbairn and Olivier Varenne, commented, “Our world is heavily mediated. The artists respond with ephemeral work that by its nature cannot be “really” tracked. They use materials with a limited life span, or that consistently evolve. These very different, often site-specific works are united by their concern with states of change. Evolution, dissolution, memory, fragility and decay”.

The marriage of illusion and actuality gives birth to the ephemeral. All of art registers this primordial chemistry like a seismograph. The key for decoding art’s riddle is missing, as is the cue for understanding the literary records of certain extinct peoples and cultures. The young have always copied their elders. Art and life are a single coin. Inspiration is a form of atavistic phenomenology; it is also a limitless form of measure with roots in the unknowable. (Extract from Howard Hussey’s essay for the on&on catalogue).