Juan Silió Gallery presents “misty floors wet skies”, the second solo show by nora aurrekoetxea etxebarria in Madrid. Continuing her research on the architecture of desire and the architecture of the domestic, her latest works focus increasingly on the materiality of the pieces.
Many of nora’s sculptures are derived from domestic elements such as mattresses, screens, curtains, towels, or architectural spaces like hallways or stairs, allowing her to explore the movements and relationships these objects or spaces demand. How do form and language affect emotion? How many and what kind of bodies do form and space exclude and/or invite? This relational aspect between space and the ephemeral posture the body must adopt in relation to furniture deepens her reflection on the (in)balance between ornament and function.
In “misty floors wet skies”, the sculptures are presented with a composition that forces the viewer to lower their gaze—an invitation to inhabit the floor, observing works that in turn bend, roll, or unfold. The inflatable mattress is an object she has previously experimented with, pushing the possibilities of materials like plaster, metal, or concrete. Now working with latex, a material that allows her to explore the idea of “soft sculpture,” the fold and the unfold.
Devoid of air, these casts become skin, a negative mold, a negative space where the sculptures acquire the potential to wrap (themselves), but also to expand, to break. In this way, she places fragility as the framework of the exhibition, proposing vulnerability as the only possibility of encounter. Air beds have the ability to embrace or expel bodies, to occupy and vacate spaces. As sculptures, it empties to fold itself, being both deformed and formal at once. It seeks to take up space and invite other bodies to share the horizontality from a vertical point of view.
Light has become in Nora’s work an element that runs through it and is inseparable from it. It is the element on which the exhibition set-up has been built, starting with the dark and empty space. The luminaire, in its minimum power, moves away from its functionality and becomes another element that draws the sky with a dim light that envelops the space and divides it into two distinct planes – misty floors wet skies. It obliges to look up to lines that accentuate the architecture, while the walls of the gallery, paradoxically, become blurred, are an accessory horizon that seems to no longer support any structure.
In this blurred space, one of the works invites us to continue on the first floor, to descend another level to the gallery’s warehouse, which hosts an installation that continues the subversion of materials: foam that break, plastics of air. In the Grey series, gray plastics for the protection of objects in transport are formalized with tape, initiating a formal play of air bodies that start from the playful. On the contrary, a large piece of foam stands as a large body that resists attempts to subtract forms from it.
An open process also reflected in the text accompanying the exhibition, which captures an automatic writing exercise based on the experience of a performer among the works. This collaborative exercice based on performance and writting is essential to the artist’s methodology, expanding the sculptural practice to the body and language.
Graduated in Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country and holding and MA in Sculpture at Royal College of Art, Nora Aurrekoetxea Etxebarria (Bilbao, 1989) is currently artist in residence at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. She has been artist in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), Solomon R. Guggenheim (New York), BilbaoArte (Bilbao) and Paradise Air (Tokyo). She has received grants from Basque Government production grant, Fundación Botín, het cultuurs, AC/E Accion Cultural España and Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds. She has been awarded with prizes such as ARCO Madrid, IX Premio Internacional de Arte MGF, Gure Artea prize and Generaciones 2022. She has solo shows in galleries such as Intersticio (London) and Juan Silió (Madrid) and independent spaces such as Racoon (Barcelona) and P////AKT (Amsterdam). Her works has been seen in group show in galleries such as Travesía Cuatro (Guadalajara, Mexico), Hauser & Wirth (Menorca), Pedro Cera (Lisbone), L21 (Mallorca) and institutions such as Foundation Fiminco (Paris), Centro Botín (Santander), Ca2m (Madrid), SUPER preview (London), HAUS WIEN (Wien), Mutter (Amsterdam), Omstand (Arnhem), Tabakalera (Donostia), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Museo Guggenheim (Bilbao), Fundación Oteiza (Alzuza) and Blue Project (Barcelona).
Her works is part of the permanent collection of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, ARTIUM- Basque Museum Centre of Contemporary Art, Fundación Ma José Jove, Fundación ARCO, DKV, Museo CA2M, and Fundación Botín among others.
Thanks to: Lisa Barnard, Adam Russell Jones, Lili Huston-Herterich, Hugo Weissbart, Miloš Trakilović, Jessica Wilson, Maria Barnas, Lorenzo García-Andrade Llamas, Natasha Soobramanien, Erik Tlaseca, Claudia Vetrano, Rijskakademie van Beeldende Kunsten.
