Lisson New Space is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Allora and
Calzadilla in the UK, previewing at 29 Bell Street on 30 April from 6-9pm.
Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.1971, Cuba) have
been working together since 1995. They live and work in Puerto Rico, a hybrid
Caribbean culture with a colonial legacy that continues to flourish in the
present day under the fragile auspices of the United States. Despite its tropical
location and the abundant natural beauty of the surrounding region, Puerto
Rico is an island where heavy industry, commerce and space exploration takes
precedence. It is this fertile and unusual diversity that informs the subject
matter and approach behind Allora and Calzadilla’s varied body of work.
Cyclones, chalk cylinders, colour chromatics, computer codes, cosmic
communications, colonial crimes, civil disobedience and capturing sunlight have
all featured in their work. Their inventive use of materials and strong sense of
aesthetic, encompass art historical references and create a new artistic
vocabulary within a psychological, political and social context.
Read moreThe works in this exhibition are all linked thematically to the notion of
‘Unstable Atmospheres’...
‘Conditioning Justice’ is an architectural model of the Supreme Court of Justice in
San Juan, Puerto Rico designed by the architects Toro & Ferrer. It is a tropical
modernist building, which resembles an enormous air conditioner. The interior
of the sculpture mirrors the form of the external façade and houses an air
conditioning unit, a device that normally expels hot air through the exterior of
a building and disperses cold air throughout the interior. In this instance the air
conditioning unit exists as a dysfunctional apparatus for the architectural form
that simultaneously exudes hot and cold air as a result of an internal crisis.
‘Undercover’ is a drawing intervention, which seeks to highlight issues that are
often overshadowed and remain undercover in media depictions of protest.
This series of work is informed by strategies used by the state, whereby
government agents implement undercover operations to prevent dissident
groups from rightfully organising demonstrations and expressing their civil
liberties. Allora and Calzadilla re-work these media images in a manner that
ambiguously inverts state policing methods. Through an intervention into the
representation itself, the artist’s have placed the protestors under-cover in an
attempt to re-cover, or draw to attention the messages at the margins of the
photographs.
‘Heat Cast’ consists of a basic framework of a satellite communication system
that is rendered linearly with infrared lights that gradually transmit heat and light
energy in irregular patterns. This satellite, the Hubble Space Telescope,
previously used for gathering and broadcasting images of the universe, is
suspended from the ceiling, periodically bathing the gallery in an intense glow of
colour that correlates with the constant instability of heat temperature
throughout the space.
The ‘Back Fire’ series are colour photographs of constellations, stars and
galaxies, which have been set fire to from the back with matches. This action
has generated a new space both physically and photographically. The burning of
the photograph fires-back an unstable image, which has been re-photographed
at precisely the moment of ignition.
Allora and Calzadilla live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Recent exhibitions
include ‘Ailleurs/Ici’ Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; ‘Common Wealth’
Tate Modern, London; ‘Puerto Rican Light’ The America’s Society, NY; XXIV Sao
Paolo Biennale, Brazil; PS1 Contemporary Art Centre, NY. Forthcoming solo
exhibitions include ICA, Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (both July
2004)
