BEIJING.- On the occasion of the Olimpic Games Beijing ´08, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art will host the exhibition World Record:Art & Sport organized by the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), from Valencia, Spain; At the media conference on 6th August, IVAM will also present the novel “The Last Podium” by Vicente Miguel Seguí.

With the stable and fast economic development of China, the desire to know about China and Chinese culture is steadily increasing worldwide. It is against this background that IAC Foundation entered the stage, and since its establishment, it commits itself to clollaborating with artists, curators, critics, world-renowned museums, art centers and public institutes, to introduce Chinese contemporary art to the West, especially to Europe. Meanwhile, the foundation will provide support and funding to outstanding international projects and artists to travel to China. Iberia Center for contemporary Art (founded by IAC Foundation) already builds up interactive connections with important museums from Austria, Spain, United States, Britain, France etc, and will contribute a series of art projects in the future.

The exhibition World Record:Art & Sport is a further collaboration between Iberia Center for Contemporary Art and IVAM after their first cooperation 55 days in Valencia - Chinese Art Meeting on May, 2008, which has aroused wide interest from all circles of Spain; moreover, it also induced further and extensive collaboration between IAC Foundation with IVAM and other Spanish Museums: on the one hand, Spanish Museums system has expressed interest about a full-scale collection of Chinese contemporary Art through IAC Foundation; on the other hand, it spares no efforts in recommending excellent Spanish Artists and art projects to IAC for exchange, and the present exhibition World Record:Art & Sport is one of these results.

There are several reasons that encourage the attention in this new year to the relationship that exists between society, art and sport. 2008, Beijing will host Olimpic Games; The city of Valencia will also host the World Indoor Championships in Athletics and the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe; In 2008 also, the Spanish daily Marca, the sports newspaper with the largest circulation and the greatest number of readers in Spain, celebrates its 70th anniversary. Thanks to the coincidence of all these factors, the IVAM and Iberia Center for Contemporary Art decided to host World Record:Art & Sport,which offers the spectator an exhibition combining the Olympic, athletic and sporting spirit, deeply rooted in the human being, and shows its links with art.

Sports maintain a series of relationships with art that we can observe in the spirit of fraternity, man´s respect for man and his tireless pursuit of self-improvement. All these noble principles are required to construct sports and art. Both disciplines, art and sport, synchronise their movements to convey a message of reconciliation to the rest of the world.

In this way this exhibition World Record:Art & Sport traces the most recent steps of sport in art. Using different media as photography, paintings, video art, sculpture and installation, the artists submerge us in the body, nature, architecture and sport machines, offering the spectator the Olympic, athletic and sporting spirit, deeply rooted in the human being and showing its links with art.

Coinciding with the exhibition, the sport also is the protagonist in the novel The Last Podium. The director of the IVAM, Consuelo Císcar Casabán, together with the historian of art Francisco Jarauta Marión and the three-times champion of the Motorcycle Grand Prix, Jorge Martínez Aspar, present to us the novel The last Podium by Vicente Miguel Seguí.

Artist: Josune Amunarriz, José Manuel Ballester, Alberto Bañuelos, Fernando Canovas, Paco Caparrós, Juan E. Correa, Carlos Cuenllas, Gabriel Díaz, Tommi Grönlund & Petteri Nisunen, Keiji Kawashima, Isabel Muñoz, Miquel Navarro, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Javier Pérez, Julio Quaresma, Avelino Sala