MADRID.- The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presents “Everything that is not a portion is speculation” by Patricia Esquivias (Caracas, Venezuela, 1979), a video created within the Fisuras program for the Museum’s own productions.
This work constitutes the final installment of the Folklore series begun in 2006. The artist uses everyday situations and phenomena from popular culture to explore diverse themes related to history and Spanish idiosyncrasies in a highly unorthodox manner. The starting point for her works differs, sometimes involving startling elements like doubles and the relationships proposed in Folklore #2, and at other times appearing more personal, anecdotal and random, like in Folklore #4, to name some examples.
In general, video is the artist’s primary choice of medium, allowing her works to fluctuate freely between informal essays, mini-stories, conversations and notes. Recorded in one sitting, these documents have a performative character: they constitute a synthesis of oral components spoken in English and supported by the artist’s extensive research translated into conceptual maps and image archives. Improvisation also forms part of the process, which the artist values favorably as “the advantages of imperfection” because they endow the exhibition with both flexibility and a certain weakness.
Exhibited in one of the Museum’s marginal, transitory spaces, the work aims to highlight this contrast in architecture while emphasizing the artist’s proposed thesis. This space allows visitors to question the notion of modernity’s linear, progressive and constant time against the work’s own rhythm, marked by slowness and chance.
Patricia Esquivias (b. 1979 in Caracas, Venezuela) lives and works between Guadalajara, New York, and Madrid. She got her BA at Central Staint Martins College of Art and Design, London and her MFA at California College of Arts, San Francisco. Solo exhibitions (selection): Patricia Esquivias: Reads like the paper, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, MN / 2008 White Columns, New York; Murray Guy, New York. Group exhibitions (selection): Pensée Sauvage – über die Freiheit des Menschen, Kunstverein Frankfurt / 2008 5th berlin bienniale for contemporary art, curated by Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic.
