Artist: Rafa Munárriz
Exhibition title: Espacios que estructuran acciones
Venue: Galería Pelaires, Mallorca, Spain
Date: December 18, 2019 – March 13, 2020
Photography: ©Roberto Ruiz, ©Grimalt de Blanch / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galería Pelaires
Note: Text by Caterina Avataneo is available here
Palma, 18 December 2019. Pelaires Gallery is presenting “Espacios que estructuran acciones”, Rafa Munárriz’ (Tudela, 1990) second solo show at the gallery. The exhibition will open tomorrow, 19 December, and run until 13 March.
The exhibition – for which curator Caterina Avataneo has written a text – has been arranged around two 6-metre long galvanised sheet tunnels located in the main ground floor hall. These two pieces are about the actual construction of the exhibition venue and also establish a connection with the traffic that runs through the vaults of the city.
Parallel to the tunnels are two moving pieces made of metal grids that are based on an intervened wall idea that Munárriz already used for his work “Bloqueo relativo” displayed at Centro Botín.
The exhibition also includes a video edited during his Artist in Residence at Proyecto AMIL in Lima. The footage was taken at La Chutana racetrack, south of the capital city of Peru, and seeks to establish a correlation between traffic and loops as part of modern daily life and the formation of the famous geoglyphs of Nazca culture.
Apart from the three above mentioned items, the show features a series of smaller sculptures that are also about the political conception of urban space, which has always been examined based on the different elements that shape its physical form.
The name of the show, “Espacios que estructuran acciones”, makes reference to Henri Lefebvre’ political conception of space (in fact, through Edward Soja’s filter), which is mentioned in the text by Bruno Almeida included in the recent publication “Espacio Relativo. Rafa Munárriz” (2019): “Space and the political arrangement of space not only express social relationships but also react thereto.” Therefore, spaces structure actions and are simultaneously the result of such actions.”
Munárriz’ artistic work focuses on understanding and questioning urban space. He is interested in how citizens contront the surrounding environment, always questioning the links between artificial spatial creation and rejection, where “artificial” is synonym for “planned”. Therefore, he compares artificiality with the accidental construction and deconstruction of urban space.
His clearly spatial and sculptural works focus on the relationship that visitors establish between art and their own reality as citizens, that is, Munárriz tries to interfere in the relationship between visitors and their environment by interpreting all spatial elements involved.
Munárriz has a BA in Fine Arts from UCM (Madrid). He also studied at the ABK in Stuttgart (Germany), SAIC (USA), USP (Brazil) and FAAP (Brazil), where he received a postgraduate degree. His works have been displayed at national and international venues such as: La Casa Encendida, Casal Solleric and Centro Botín (Spain); Casa do Povo, Ateliê 397, MAB FAAP and Redbull Station (Brazil); Sullivan Galleries (Chicago) or Mumok (Vienna). He took part in the PIESP Programme led by Adriano Pedrosa and was an art resident at El Ranchito Matadero (Madrid), PIVÔ Pesquisa, Residência Artística FAAP and Redbull Station (Sao Paulo). In addition, he has received several national awards, including Primera Fase DKV 2019, Circuitos, Injuve as well as the grant awarded by the Botín Foundation.
