laPinta

The participants showed the results of their collaboration in various ways,for example, a performance by Mariana Zamarbide and Nikita Choi, texts by Ruben Verdu and Sasha Archibald, or the pedagogical interventions of Jordi Ferreiro and Chus Martínez. Also presenting the projects they have developed will be Alberto Gracia with David Armengol and Juan Canela
and the wall of Joan Cabrer and Miguel Ángel Pascual.
Other artists have used this opportunity to assume the role of the curator, getting involved in the process of the practicalities of location, or inspiring the curator to experiment with a particular situation – this has been the case with Diego Pujal, Ruben Verdu and Àlex Mitrani, and Sergi Botella with Javier Marroquí and David Arlandis. There are also curators who submerge themselves in the artistic production, as we can observe in the collaboration between Alex Brahim and Rita Rodríguez. Other artists have combined both roles, as in the relationship between Samuel Labadie and Jordi Mitjà, and some curators have assumed the role of the tutor or the critic, stimulating a particular theoretical investigation or direction aimed at inciting new processes or deepening the work of the artist. This was the case with Stamatina Gregory’s proposal for Lola Lasurt, Manuel Segade for Alex Reynolds and Antonio Mesones for Mercè Hernández.
In some collaborations the roles of artist and curator were clearly defined from the very beginning, as in the relationship of Sofie Van Loo with the artists David Bestué and Marc Vives or in the case of Ane Agirre with
Guillermo de Pfaff, nonetheless one can see that the boundaries defining both practices have become more porous and begun to dissolve.
All the participants – the ones who embraced the experimental concept of crossing roles, the ones who set themselves free from the desire to actually produce something, the ones who went in search of a critical analysis of their
work, and also the ones who wanted stimulation towards the development of a project – lived this experience as an opportunity to analyse and visualise the curatorial process.
The previous editions of Se busca, developed with Hangar and the University of Barcelona, have been gathered together in the publication Se busca Curator (ed. laPinta. 2010).

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COLLABORATIONS

David Bestué, Marc Vives & Sofie Van Loo

David Bestué and Marc Vives decided to work with curator Sofie Van Loo for their Se Busca project. The communication surrounding the project took place mainly through email and was initially a barrage of exchanged information. In the beginning the focus of their conversations was centred on the artists’ creative processes and the curator’s method of working. Given the complexity that the emails were acquiring, the artists felt it necessary to go for a more direct approach and wanted to meet with Sofie personally. This encounter took place finally, during the inauguration of the exhibition "Antes que todo" (Before Everything) curated by Aimar Arriola and Manuela Moscoso in the Arts Centre Dos de Mayo CA2M, in which the artists were participating.

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Alex Reynolds & Manuel Segade

Initially the artist Alex Reynolds, who also has a curatorial practice, got in contact with several curators who were interested in her work. Finally she decided to collaborate with Manuel Segade with whom she was already developing another project for the Caja Madrid art space, based on a method of joint dialogue.
What interested them was to utilize the opportunity of the Se busca project in order to deepen the dialogue which was being established between artist and curator for the production of the work. They exchanged various texts about the relationship. In their relationship the differentiation between artist and curator was well defined. The collaboration has been based on a recording of a text written and read by Manuel Segade and sent to the artist for her to work with. The main thing that Alex Reynolds found interesting in working together with this curator concern the level of discussion and references which the curator has brought in.

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Samuel Labadie & Jordi Mitjà

For Samuel Labadie it was clear from the beginning that he wanted to work on the topic of the artist Jimmie Durham. In order to contact him he got in touch with the art critic Pascal Beaussé, who worked as a professor in Lyon and who has worked intensively with Durham. Although Pascal accepted the invitation to collaborate, in the end he didn’t have enough time to make this possible. Thus Samuel ended up collaborating with artist and curator Jordi Mitjá, who in his work also deals with Jimmie Durham But he hasn’t discarded the possibility to make use of the contact that Pascal has with Jimmie in order to try and secure an appointment with the artist.
For Se busca, Samuel and Jordi decided to each produce for themselves a work based on a work by Durham. They created an email account to which each of them could send whatever they liked in order to share material.
Both Samuel and Jordi assumed the role of artist, but by the conclusion of the project Jordi took on more of the role of curator through his theoretical reflection.
They had already worked together before and they are also friends.

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Ruben Verdu & Sasha Archibald

Rubén Verdú was contacted by the curator Sasha Archibal, who was very interested in his work, and rapidly an exchange of emails took place about the relationship of the artist/curator and how between both these professions and attempting to articulate. Their collaboration centres around an examination of the historical question departing from premises with which the artist works Throughout their correspondence they have been working on an excavation of the concept an relevance of cultural Darwinism, associates and above all, the strong cumulative obsessions which characterise the historical dynamics.

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Diego Pujal, Ruben Verdu & Àlex Mitrani

During a studio visit to the artists’ studios, Àlex Mitrani saw the possibility to create a connection between the work of Diego Pujal and that of Ruben Verdu. Rubén makes use of literary references, makes use of ekphrasis to introduce descriptions of a work of art into novels by contemporary writers, and Diego works with the image with the intention of retaining a language completely removed from the verbal, a type of painting which is non-representational, with neologisms as titles. The intervention of the curator has allowed a structure to be created which set in motion the artistic and critical registers of a hybrid practice and gives space for the possibility to discover relevant questions and to try out a stimulating hypothesis on the relationship between the work and the discourse.
The proposal consists of the construction of a game that exercises the mechanisms of a rhetorical description of works of art but without the existence of the actual work. Thus a work process is established which combines the lucid with the analytical, offering various registers for different readings. The rules have been clearly defined, as they have to be in order to play a game, but the outcomes of all this are unpredictable.
The proposal for Se busca takes the form of a publication that includes text as well as graphic work, synthesised through the exchange between the participants and offering the basis for continued development later on.

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Alberto Gracia & David Armengol, Juan Canela

For Se busca, the artist Alberto Gracia – who works in such diverse mediums as video and sound pieces, interactivity, sculptural pieces, drawing and performance – wanted to be put in touch with a curator with whom both of them could assume the role of curator and that of artist, and who was part of the local art scene. He commenced collaboration with Juan Canela, and in the end they decided together to invite David Armengol, an independent curator whom the artist knew from previous collaborations, to collaborate.
For Se busca the project they’ve developed is entitled “Blue Balls”, an installation consisting of two pieces of sculpture and a publication which references the Atalaya magazine put out by the Jehova’s Witnesses.

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Guillermo de Pfaff & Ane Agirre Loinaz

Having already lived and worked abroad as an artist, Guillermo de Pfaff, was more interested in working with a curator from the local scene. Se busca proposed that he could collaborate with Ane Agirre Loinaz who was already engaged in a curatorial practice that could be interesting for this artist.
Guillermo was adamant that he didn’t want to talk about his work, but he found the idea of showing the way he operates toward resolving a work and contrasting it with the way of the curator, an interesting option. It was necessary to work on a joint theme, to produce something within the conditions offered by Se busca, any pretext could be valid, and they decided to work on the theme of country music which was something which the artist’s mind was on at that moment.
Although both reside in Barcelona they didn’t find much time to meet one another and so they decided to work separately, compiling information and exchanging emails.
The collaboration derived from an intuitive premise on the relationship between the aesthetics of country music and those of the romantics of the nineteenth century, centred around the landscapes of both movements.

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Rita Rodríguez & Alex Brahim

For the artist Rita Rodríguez it was interesting to work with someone form the local scene. Her collaboration with Alex Brahim emerged from communal interests, such as performance, action art and social themes.
They met in person several times, both in the artist’s studio and in the street. From the offset the idea occurred to them to work with the idea of transmutation, something which interested Rita, and on the topic of identities, which was of interest to Alex. They decided to exchange papers. Rita would become him, Alex, and Alex would become her, Rita.
Quite by coincidence they were both moving house in the same month it became quite difficult to continue that idea. But as chance would have it they now discovered that they were living very close to one another and in a straight line, one in Rocafort St. and the other on a corner connecting with this street. As both of them work with context, they decided to work for Se busca on this trajectory or route and to realise interventions in the street and to seek out a connection between their two persons and the space.
Both of them assumed the role of curator and that of artist.

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Joan Cabrer & Miguel Ángel Pascual

The artist Joan Cabrer initially thought of collaborating with an art critic, but in the end he liked the idea of collaboration with another artist and creating a joint work of art together. The relationship with the artist Miguel Ángel Pascual, to whom he had already been introduced at an art fair, was very easygoing. At their initial meeting they discovered that both of them make use of other images as a starting point for their paintings.
The first time they met in Hangar in Joan Cabrer’s studio they decided to create a dossier of images culled from the internet with the intention of making a mural based on the theme of the crisis or of decay.
They met on various occasions to exchange images and to make selections suited to the space which they were going to paint the mural.
They have been working since the beginning of the collaboration, each of them taking on the role of both the artist and that of curator.

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Mercè Hernández & Antonio Mesones

Initially painter Mercè Hernández was interested in working with a choreographer in the understanding that to take this opportunity to work with someone who works with stage space would bring some new aspect to her work. Hernández always takes certain formal rules as a starting point for the construction of her work. These rules create a starting point for a series of circumstances which determine each step in the painting.
In the end, because the choreographer was unavailable Mercè decided that it would be interesting to collaborate with an artist coming from a different conceptual line and a distinctly different generation.
The artist Antonio Mesones, who lives in Berlín where he is also director of an artists’ collective gallery has a long and recognised professional trajectory, he took advantage of a visit to Barcelona to get to know Mercè and her work in person.
For Se busca he made a proposal that would require a change in Mercè’s working method. He sent her a book in which Mercè has to fill in whatever way she wishes but on condition that she does so each day as if the book is a diary for images.
The artist never before worked directly with a curator. The thing, which interested her most about the collaboration with Antonio Mesones, was the certainty, the consistency, and the fact that it must start with a drawing and that he, being another artist, has assumed the role of curator.

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Mariana Zamarbide & Nikita Choi

Initially artist Mariana Zamarbide was in contact with various curators with whom she was interested in working but ultimately this wasn’t possible because of financial limitations. In the end she decided to work with Chinese curator Nikita Choi. Previously she had been in contact with Taiwan and Japan and was interested in building up a relationship with Asia to further investigate relationships within her work. In the first encounter, which took place via skype, Nikita proposed that Marina reconsider the way she presents her work on Internet and perhaps give more visibility to the performative aspect of her work.
By chance it happened that Mariana Zamarbide was working on a piece entitled Divorce Dress and Nikita Choi on her wedding dress, so they decided to work with this parallel coincidence. The artist was interested in the way the curator reflects and relates performance with the body and also the way that the body’s knowledge of itself is continually reframed along the way. The performance will be the language chosen to relate this relationship.

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Jordi Ferreiro & Chus Martínez

Jordi Ferreiro thought of collaborating with curator Chus Martínez as both of them are working in the MACBA, she as head of exhibitions and he in the educational department. His interest in working with her stems from the idea of a carte-blanche for trying out his ideas in the museum and the idea that he could get a curator in such an important institution to become interested in the work of an emerging artist.
His project is a collaborative work with all the staff of the museum, for example the security team, the cleaners, staff from the information desk, and ticket sales, etc.
The work revolves around the axis of the idea of “wasting time during working hours”, a kind of strategic game in which the artist, together with the museum workers, generates a series of actions during their working hours that balances on the thin line between what is permitted and what is not permissible.
For Se busca, another of the challenges that Ferreiro hoped would face is the question of if the curator would eventually come to the project’s presentation or would write a text about it.