Lisson Gallery is delighted to announce the inaugural exhibition at their new
gallery, 29 Bell Street, with the installation ‘Space closed by corrugated metal’
2002 by Santiago Sierra.
Originally from Spain, but now based in Mexico, Sierra has become well known
for his controversial video work and installations, which highlight the
problematical nature of a capitalist economy. His past projects are remarkably
diverse; in an earlier work he used petrol to set fire to a gallery on its opening
night and in New York he hired someone to live behind a wall at P.S.1 Gallery
for 15 days, 24 hours a day. The tasks Sierra selects are usually repetitive,
pointless and absurd. For his solo exhibition at the IKON Gallery earlier this
year Sierra paid an Irish street vagrant in Birmingham’s New Street to say “My
participation in this piece could generate a profit of 72, 000 dollars. I am being paid
five pounds.” While this appears highly exploitative, the beggar in the video, and
many other of Sierra’s participants are willing victims and paid at least as much as
the local average wage.
His work could be seen as merely reflecting the harsh reality of a market
economy where everyone has their price, but much of his work has a powerful
minimalist aesthetic and a poetic simplicity that transforms its political rhetoric
into something more subtle and indeterminate. It can also be seen in the
tradition of Arte Povera and the socially engaged process artists of the 1970s.
Read moreSantiago Sierra’s work at Lisson will happen in two parts:
PART I – 10th September – 10th October
PART II –16th October – 6th November
Santiago Sierra has produced a new audio project for the South London Gallery
and The Felix Trust for Art to take place simultaneously in London, Geneva,
Frankfurt, Madrid and Vienna as part of a South London Gallery group exhibition
entitled “20 Million Mexicans Can’t Be Wrong” from 18th September 17th
November.
Santiago Sierra has exhibited extensively all over the world. Recent projects
include Venice Biennale (2001), ARS 01 at KIASMA, Helsinki (2001),
KunstWerke, Berlin and PS1, New York (2000)
Santiago Sierra Proves Money Speaks Louder than
Words as Worker Stand in Silence
Preview: 15th October 6 -7pm
Exhibition: 16th October – 6th November 2-3pm daily except
Sundays
For Part II of his exhibition at Lisson Gallery, Santiago Sierra has created two
linked ‘actions’ in the gallery entitled “Workers facing the wall” and “Worker
facing into a corner”. Participants in the action have been instructed by Sierra to
stand in silence with their heads bowed for one hour a day during the course of
the exhibition. As is usual with Sierra’s work, the participants have been
recruited locally and are being paid the minimum wage.
Facing the wall has several kinds of associations. It invokes ideas of humiliation,
disgrace and punishment. The person facing the wall is vulnerable to attack, to
being stabbed in the back, both literally and metaphorically, and also brings to
mind prisoners in front of a firing squad. Standing head bowed and in silence is a
submissive stance and potentially uncomfortable, though it remains to be seen
whether visitors to the gallery will be equally discomforted by what they
experience.
People seen from behind is a recurring image in Sierra’s work. In a recent action
for the Kunsthalle, Vienna, he recruited people to stand in two lines facing the
wall wearing only their underwear. They were then arranged in order of their
skin tone. More controversially, he paid six unemployed Cubans to have a line
tatooed across their backs for 30 dollars and he later did the same to a group of
drug-addicted prostitutes, paying them the price of a shot of heroin in return.
Now based in Mexico, Spanish-born Sierra has become well-known for his highly
political stance and his investigations into the exchange of money and labour. His
work suggests that an undeniable fact of capitalism is that everyone has a price.
Whilst sometimes shocking, Sierra’s work is rooted in a powerful minimalist
aesthetic and is informed by a poetic simplicity that elevates his work above
mere political rhetoric.
Lisson Gallery’s new space at 29 Bell Street will be open to the public for the
first time during this exhibition. For more than three decades Lisson Gallery has
been at the forefront of developments in contemporary art, introducing young
artists to a wider audience as well as providing continuing support to those
whose reputations are already established worldwide. Lisson Gallery has always
been an independent force in the international art scene and the opening of 29
Bell Street will further confirm its position as one of the great supporters of
artistic innovation.
