June Crespo at CarrerasMugica

Artist: June Crespo

Exhibition title: Between Someone and Something

Venue: CarrerasMugica, Bilbao, Spain

Date: May 27 – July 29, 2022

Photography: Ander Sagastiberri / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and CarrerasMugica, Bilbao

A few months ago Marc told me about a place near where he lives, in Berlin, where they make horse-riding saddles. He spoke about their internal structure and different layers. It reminded me that a few of the favourites I had saved on Wallapop at the time were saddles. I am fascinated by the form of this object which responds to its function of mediating between two bodies, and how one body adopts to another.

The starting point for my work is often an obsession with a certain object and a study of its forms. As I discover what it has to say to me, or how it looks at me, my bond with it is strengthened. Likewise, as I was preparing for this exhibition several images have stuck in my mind: the relationship of intimate contact between the tongue and palate, or between the eyelid and the eyeball; the contact between delicate skin and the corner of the mouth, like between the petals of a flower. Another thing that I have noticed that the different pieces have in common is a kind of push and pull. Almost like a horse as if lopes forward.

Rereading a book by Deleuze on painting, I came across this sentence: “pushing forms until they have nothing to do with illustration.” Pushing forms until tearing them away from … removing them from …

I try to accompany the appropriated forms until they become something else. Until they become one thing and many things at the same time. A form pushed from within, with slight variations that precipitate in another form. I like to think that all the pieces are one single piece in the making. I insist and repeat in order to capture subtle differences, to create a rhythm or to encircle something that eludes me.

I have taken this exhibition as a place to rehearse and practise. To begin to engage with a desire to work with the wall as a plastic surface through fabrics in tension and relaxation on objects that stand out and yet remain partially veiled. Besides exploring the relationship between rigid and flexible, opaque and translucent elements, I also wanted to bring into play a game of revealing and concealing, dressing and undressing, appearing and disappearing.

-June Crespo

CarrerasMugica is pleased to present, from 27 May to 29 July, Between Someone and Something, June Crespo’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, following those held in 2015 and 2017.

For this exhibition, the artist has prepared several works. On the one hand, eight wall works, made of steel and bronze, which go further in her research into the assembly and reconfiguration of known objects. This same eagerness to experiment runs through another group of works made with polyester resin and fibreglass: some, created from the formwork of pillars used in construction, establish a dialogue with the gallery space; others, from drums, an element also used in her Core series made in concrete. Flowers, which have undergone a change of scale in wax and bronze casting, and a work from the No osso series complete this exhibition. Textiles, frequent in Crespo’s work, acquire a new prominence.

June Crespo’s art ptactice is generally classified as sculpture, a médium in which she deploys a language predicated on methods like collage or assemblage coupled with an experimental use of the image. The origins of her work can usually be found in the affective and dialectic bonds between forms and functional objects from her surrounding environs. Intuition is a starting point for touching on all kinds of interests and concerns in her Works, though without addressing them explicitly or premeditateldy in the initial conception.

Her methodoligical strategy is grounded in the material transformation of pre-existing elements and other forms which she appropriates by means of reproducing them with casts. Crespo interferes in the way the objects are interpreted, unleashibg their associative potencial in a process that involves engaging in a whole set of operations that range from combination, reconfiguration or organization of different parts to the incorporation of procesual contingencies, like fragments, breakages, imperfections or traces. These “events” are co-opted into the work, reinforce its materiality, enhance its tactile quality and enrich the narrative connotation of the proposed new structures.

June Crespo (Pamplona1982) lives and works in Bilbao. Obtained her BFA from the Universidad del País Vasco (Bilbao) in 2005 and completed a two years residency at De Ateliers (Amsterdam) in 2017. Her solo shows include Am I an Object (2021) PA///KT (Amsterdam); Helmets (2020) Artium, Basque Museum-Center of Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz; No Osso (2019) at Certain Lack of Coherence, Porto; Ser Dos (2017) and Cosa y tú (2015) at CarrerasMugica gallery in Bilbao. Recently her work has also been shown in group such as: The Milk of Dreams, Venice Biennale 2022; Fata Morgana (2022) Jeu de Paume (Paris) and The point of Sculpture at Fundación Miró (Barcelona).