FONS ÀUDIO #13
Àngels Ribé
Àngels Ribé (Barcelona, 1943) is part of a generation of artists who embarked on their careers in the late sixties, in the midst of profound political and social changes that had a direct impact on the way artistic practice is conceived.
Shedding the status of autonomous aesthetic entity that it had laid claim to during modernity, the work of art opened up to a process of dematerialisation and socialisation that brought about new relationships with the spectator, the art institution and the market.
In 1967, stifled by the oppressive atmosphere of Barcelona, Àngels Ribé left for France to study sociology. Settling in Paris, she participated in the May 1968 movements and soon began working in the studio of the sculptor Piotr Kowalski. By this time, she had discovered her artistic vocation.
In 1969, she publicly presented her first installation, ‘Laberint’: a circular labyrinth made of transparent yellow plastic that turned the exhibition space into a flowing stage of paths improvised by the spectators.
In the seventies, Ribé moved to the United States (Chicago and New York) and came into contact with a series of alternative art spaces that reflected the emerging art scene. It was then that she consolidated the basic elements of the artistic grammar which had started to take shape in her Parisian period, and that her de-emphasising of the object became apparent.
Ribé created ephemeral installations and performances, which she documented poetically through photography. Her body was the nexus of extremely medited actions, in which natural processes and elements played a key role. Ribé essentially engages with nature through two paths: one more immediate and sensorial, linked to physical expressions –’Intersecció de llum’, ‘Intersecció de pluja’, ‘Intersecció d’onada’, all from 1969 –, and another more abstract path in which geometry is the organising principle. Here, the artist uses the triangle as the basic underlying shape in relation to her own body, as can be seen in the works from the series ‘3 punts’ (created between 1970 and 1973) and in ‘Invisible Geometry 3’ (1973).
In the eighties, Ribé returned to Spain and revived her interest in the objectual nature of the artwork and its sculptural embodiment. She began working with iron and –from 2000 on– with neon lights – which re-connected her to the incorporeal nature of light and space –, and at the same time produced an extensive body of graphic work.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Robert Janz that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Sergi Aguilar that we were unable to include the first time around.
Sergi Aguilar
Sergi Aguilar talks about his initial steps in the field of jewellery and about postmodernism in Spain during the eighties, and offers us an overview of his artistic career and his working methods through an analysis of his works in the MACBA Collection.
Ignasi Aballí
From obsessive classifications to anti-paintings, from a constant probing of the role of the spectator to imperceptible modifications, Ignasi Aballí’s work is both hermetic and accessible. A delicate balance between concept and form that draws inspiration from everyday life, literature and film in order to talk about absences, filters, fictions and limits.
Perejaume
Perejaume has a long-standing fascination with the shamanic power of mimesis. And writing, artistic practice and endless walks through his natural surroundings have been the means by which the artist has shaped his personal landscape narratives, which lie somewhere between figuration, imagination and theoretical reflection.
Robert Janz
Painter, sculptor, printmaker, poet and street artist Robert Janz talks about his urban interventions, about art, Buddhism, politics, poetry and the passage of time.
Eugènia Balcells
Eugènia Balcells (Barcelona, 1943) began her artistic career in the mid-seventies within the conceptual art scene. A pioneer of experimental film, video art, and video installation, she also works with visual scores, artist’s books, objects, performance art, photocopies, sounds, and photographs. Balcells considers herself an interdisciplinary researcher interested in the possibilities of physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, sociology, music, and poetry. She brings these disciplines into the field of art, as an agora from which to reimagine and reinvent the world. In FONS AUDIO #54 we join Eugènia Balcells in looking back over a life dedicated to art, pausing to examine some of her works in the MACBA collection.
Kristin Oppenheim
Kristin Oppenheim employs the dramatic properties of her own voice to articulate sound and visual installations that immerse the spectator in hypnotic environments replete with potential narratives. In FONS AUDIO #12, Oppenheim gives us some tips for approaching her installation 'Hey Joe' (1996), which is part of the MACBA Collection.
Muntadas
The work of Antoni Muntadas is an exhaustive study of communication processes and their numerous implications for society.
Bartomeu Marí, Teresa Grandas and Àngels Ribé speak about the exhibition "In the labyrinth. Àngels Ribé, 1969-84".
Esther Ferrer
The oeuvre of Esther Ferrer (San Sebastián, 1937) is characterized by a methodic minimalism, in which quotidian objects and her own body become the main elements in her work.