2006. ARTISTS / INTERVENTIONS / LINKS
Arnoud SchuurmanTranslucid View www.arnoud.is.dreaming.org
Chus García FrailePost it www.chusgarciafraile.com
Virginia Corda + Maria Paula DobertiAccidentes urbanos www.virginiacorda.com.ar www.mariapauladoberti.com.ar
Gustav HellbergPulsing Path: una visión ambigua www.gustavhellberg.com
Lorma MartiBlend Out Stefano de Martino+ Karen Lohrmann www.lormamarti.com
Nicole Cousino + Chris VecchioSpeakhere! www.ncousino.comwww.noisemantra.com
Tanadori Yamaguchi + Maki Portilla-Kawamura + Key Portilla-Kawamura + Ali Ganjavian Locutorio Colón www.tadanori.desorde.net/www.studio-kg.com/studio-kg.com
Tao G. Vrhovec Reality Soundtrack www.realitysoundtrack.org www.taogvs.org
Tere Recarens Remolino www.tererecarens.com Wilfredo Prieto Ouroboros www.wilfredo-prieto.com
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2006. Chus García Fraile. POST IT (proposed locations)
I’ve thought of two possible locations:
- in Alcalá street, covering Puerta de Alcalá, Bank of Spain, the Metrópoli building (bifurcation Alcalá and Gran Vía)
- or the Recoletos artery, Colón Towers and Colón Square.
The organization should decide, depending on permits and other facts, the appropriate location.
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2006. Chus García Fraile. POST IT (technical data)
ASSEMBLY AND TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS FOR THE “POST IT” PROJECT
1. This project would consist of producing and printing 10 polyester outdoor canvases of 400 x 300 cm. The digital prints of contents would be made with special fluorescent ink, so that they could be read also at night without the need of extra light.
2. The assembly system would be integrated in the poster. These great canvases would only need plastic bridles hooked to the canvas with holes on its upper corners.
3. Technically it would need two staff members and a crane operator. In case that the posters were placed from windows we could do this, in case that the internal access to the façade were impossible or difficult, we would place them directly with a crane.
4. Transport would be in need of a van with 4 metres of pilling space, and two people to load, unload and assembly.
PLANNING
Expected time to do everything: 3 working days.
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2006. Chus García Fraile. POST IT (theoretical data)
This project intends to reflect, as all my recent work, on consumer society of today’s Western culture.
10 posters would be shown along specific buildings (named in the assembly note). They are reproductions of the typical POST Its, that we use everyday as a means to remember things, but larger than usual. Made in a large scale and taken out of their normal context, they intend to offer another interpretation while they shock citizens.
They’re notes referring to everyday worries, a way to fix behaviours in our memory that involve a change of attitude, based on the nature of our daily habits.
There are lots of spaces where we could contemplate these post its in our daily habitat (offices, bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, etc), places where we spend large amounts of time and would remind us of those everyday sentences.
Go to the gym, follow the diet, choose a product, smoke less, etc, would have added meanings. Often we see how a car, a perfume, etc, assure us more confidence, security or social success. They are signs and symbols that involve social level or distinction. An author said that a citizen in the street would feel safer with a good suit on, than with a good religious conscience. These are consumer habits that make no sense, taking up a lot of time and money that could be used in more important ways.
We go to beauty parlours or walk down shopping malls seeming free and using that which we seem to need, but reality is that we are victims of a great pressure that the mass media places on us, the power of marketing. The “POST IT” project is similar to everyday scenes, such as promotion posters, etc. The invasion of adverts takes up more physical and mental space each time, using strategies that are more aggressive everyday.
The frantic, excessive and irrational forms of consuming only provide ephemeral satisfactions and are rooted in deep dissatisfaction.
Apparently, these notes would refer to small decisions, but those are the most important ones, for they would also affect the people that live around us. They wish to reduce or neutralize some excesses, the myth of welfare. These notes would suggest a new economy and ecology of consumerism in our mental ecosystem.
Without any moral or critical intention, they would simply express some daily worries for current citizens.
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2006. Chus García Fraile. POST IT (location)
Several façades: Círculo de Bellas Artes, Casa de América y Palacio de comunicaciones
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2006. Chus García Fraile. POST IT (published text)
This project sets out from a reflection on consumerism in western culture and our everyday habits, the limits of public and private, and the invasion of the personal sphere by the media pressure to which we are constantly subjected.
The project involves a reproduction of the post-it notes we use every day as reminders. They are notes of our concerns, reminding us to do or refrain from doing certain things as we fix them in our memory, bringing a change of perspective in such everyday phrases. Notes which, magnified and displayed in public, would become advertisements of the everyday, thus acquiring other meanings.
The little concerns of daily life – going to the gym, dieting, smoking less, etc. – would in this new context reflect not our own wishes but the continuous seductive action of commercial advertising.
Incessantly subjected to advertisements, we are free, but free above all to choose between the various products on the market. Often we see how a car, an eau-de-cologne or the like will give us greater confidence, security or social success: they are symbols associated with social status and distinction. If a person on the street can today feel more secure in a good suit than with a good conscience it is because advertising has acquired the importance of an ideology. Our society and culture have absorbed the discourse of advertising, and it is not at all a neutral discourse. People’s needs and demands are (except the basic ones) created at any one time and correspond to the interests of the economy.
According to Pérez Tornero, “it is not going too far to speak of the construction of a model consumer. Advertising discourse, through successive waves of messages, all essentially redundant, helps to model a person concerned about novelty, who longs to possess the object offered and recycles his or her values and habits according to the latest offerings on the market.” For Tornero, advertising, through its strategies of identification with the consumer and projection, makes “each advertisement a kind of journey inside us.”
If this is true, the little private post-its we use to organize our day will essentially coincide with the adverts posted on the streets of our cities, and might even replace them.
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2006. Chus García Fraile (Cv)
MADRID, 1965LIVES AND WORKS IN MADRIDWWW.CHUSGARCIAFRAILE.COMWORK EXPOSED IN MADRID ABIERTO: POST IT
SOLO EXHIBITIONS2005· Galería Fernando Pradilla, Madrid
2004· Casas Riegner Gallery, Miami· Galería ADN, Barcelona
2003· 2X1. Centro Municipal de las Artes de Alcorcón, Madrid· For Sale. Galería Bacelos, Vigo· Museo Municipal de Valdepeñas, Ciudad Real
2001· Galería Antonio de Bartola, Barcelona
2000· Galería Garaje Regium, Madrid
1998· Galería Pilar Barrio, Madrid
1993· Galería Fernando Silió, Santander· Galerie Pierre Birtschansky, Paris
GROUP EXHIBITIONS2005· Shopped to death. Tuteurhaus, Berlin· Plotart. Galería Massimo Lupoli, Rome· Parafraseando al diablo. Harto-Espacio, Montevideo, Uruguay· The other Europe. Gallerie Se, Bergen, Norway· PHOTOESPAÑA. Fundación Aena, Barajas Airport, Madrid· PHOTOESPAÑA. Galería Fernando Pradilla, Madrid· Subliminal. Art Proyects, Gijón· D foto. Galería ADN, San Sebastián· PHOCO Internacional Photography Competition. Centro Cultural Cecilio Muñoz Fillol, Valdepeñas· ARCO 05. Galería Fernando Pradilla, Madrid· Unplugged. Gallerie Se, Bergen, Norway· Antirrealismos. Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand· Antirrealismos. Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia
2004· Solo para las masas. Galería Blanca Soto, Madrid· Antirrealismos. Fremantle Art Centre, Perth· Antirrealismos. Institute for Modern Arts (IMA), Brisbane, Australia· Antirrealismos. Plimsoll Gallery Centre for the Arts, Hobart, Tasmania· Fiberfib. Public Art, beach intervention, Benicasim· ADN 1. Galería ADN, Barcelona· 3rd Biennial of Contemporary Representational Art. Galería Clave, Murcia· ARCO. Galería Bacelos, Madrid
2003· Arte Lisboa. Bacelos, Vigo· Antirrealismos. Sydney, Australia· Art Chicago 03. Casas Riegner Gallery, USA· Museo Municipal de Orense. Purificación García Photography Collection· Purificación García Collection. Museo Municipal de Orense· Salón de Otoño de Madrid. Casa de Vacas· Galería Arcaute. Monterrey, Mexico · Indisciplinados. Marco, Vigo· ARCO. Galería Antonio de Bartola, Madrid· ARCO. Galería Fernando Pradilla, Madrid· Art Miami Beach. Casas Riegner, Miami, USA· Deluxe. Monasterio de Nuestra Señora del Prado, Valladolid
GRANTS AND AWARDS2005· 3rd prize in PHOCO. Valdepeñas, Ciudad Real
2004· Honourable Mention, Focus Abengoa Foundation, Seville· Fibart. Beach Art Project in Benicasim, Castellón
2003· Acquisition Prize in the 6th Brocense Plastic Arts Competition. Cáceres Provincial Council· Reina Sofía Extraordinary Prize. Salón de Otoño, Madrid· Purificación García Acquisition Prize, Madrid· Scholarship for Visual Creation. VEGAP, Madrid
2002· Basketball Fine Arts Biennial, 2nd Prize. Pedro Ferrándiz Foundation, Madrid· Honourable mention in 3rd Royal Premier Hoteles International Painting Competition, Malaga
WORK IN COLLECTIONS· Faculty of Fine Arts, Madrid· Alcorcón Town Hall, Madrid· Fregenal de la Sierra Town Hall, Badajoz· Caja de Ahorros de Segovia· UNED Collection, Madrid· Alicante Provincial Council· Regional Government of Extremadura· Comisiones Obreras Collection. Valdemoro, Madrid· Brunete Town Hall· Caja de Ahorros de Ávila· Postal and Telegraphic Museum, Madrid· Iberdrola Collection. UCLM, Toledo· Cáceres Provincial Council· Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid· Valdepeñas Provincial Council Collection· Caja Castilla La Mancha Collection, Cuenca· Hoteles Royal Premier, Malaga· Lóreal Collection· Purificación García Collection· El Brocense Cultural Institute. Cáceres Provincial Council· Ministery of Culture, Madrid· Fibart Collection· Focus-Abengoa Foundation, Seville· Valdepeñas Town Hall Collection· AENA Foundation
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