Marina Abramović
Portrait as Biography
Bernal Espacio Galería Madrid
16 February – 19 March, 2022
Bernal Espacio Galería presents Marina Abramović’s solo show Portrait as Biography, next February at La Nave Sánchez-Ubiría de Madrid.
The legendary performance artist was recently awarded the 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts.
The show, which will be her first solo show since a decade ago in Madrid, will bring together a very careful selection of a set of 11 photographs (1973-2019), as well as her recent film 7 deaths (2021), which will be exhibited for the first time in Spain, made by the artist on the life of Maria Callas.
In a time when human interaction is restricted, Marina Abramovic’s work provides a space for intimacy between the artist and the public, though the universal dialect that her work has always spoken.
Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramović (Serbia, 1946) has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form.
“The body has always been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation.” Nancy Spero.
In this curated selection of portraits which will be included in Portrait as Biography, Abramovic herself becomes the manifestation of the public’s experience, providing an entry point through her own experimentation with release, comfort and self exploration.
Elements of the natural and spiritual world, such as air, water, light, wind, and time, invite us to confront our insignificance in the present moment. Ultimately to find liberation in feelings of isolation, discomfort, suffocation, and darkness.
In interacting with Abramovic’s varying portraiture, the public find their own reflection, reminding us of the unifying experience we share collectively, even in the vastness of the unknown.
7 deaths, 2021
Film installation
1 hour, 50 seconds
“Callas was my inspiration… I
Marina Abramović, Walk Trough Walls, 2016
Abramović has created Seven Deaths, a new, immersive cinematic experience based on seven untimely demises she undergoes on screen, set to the moving soundtrack of seven Callas solos.
For all of the Seven Deaths Abramović has paired a famous original Callas solo or aria and illustrated it with the theatrical moment of the protagonist’s grisly end, albeit adding a new twist or some fresh interpretation in each case.
Abramović has been obsessed with the famous Greek soprano’s music and myth since a youthful encounter with her voice proved culturally formative for the artist, while she also cites Callas’s heart-rending personal life and lonely death as chilling echoes of her own lost loves and near-death experiences.
Marina Abramović (Serbia, 1946)
Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered performance as a visual art form. She created some of the most important early works in this practice, including Rhythm 0 (1974), in which she offered herself as an object of experimentation for the audience, as well as Rhythm 5 (1974), where she lay in the centre of a burning five-point star to the point of losing consciousness.
These performances married concept with physicality, endurance with empathy, complicity with loss of control, passivity with danger. They pushed the boundaries of self- discovery, both of herself and her audience. They also marked her first engagements with time, stillness, energy, pain, and the resulting heightened consciousness generated by long durational performance.
The body has always been both her subject and medium.
Exploring her physical and mental limits in works that ritualise the simple actions of everyday life, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. From 1975-88, Abramović and the German artist Ulay performed together, dealing with relations of duality.
She returned to solo performances in 1989 and for The Artist Is Present (2010) she sat motionless for at least eight hours per day over three months, engaged in silent eye-contact with hundreds of strangers one by one.
Some videos about Marina Abramović and her work:
Fragment of Seven Deaths (2021)
Marina Abramović meets with the public (2021)
Marina Abramović in conversation with Tim Marlow (2021)
Marina Abramović Interview: Electricity Passing Through (2017)
Marina Abramoviċ: Walk Through Walls (2016)
Marina Abramović on ‘Brilliant Ideas’ (2016)
Marina Abramović SITE Santa Fe (2016)
Marina Abramović TED (2015)
Bernal Espacio Galería
Ever since its beginnings in 2013 as an itinerant art gallery, Bernal Espacio Galería has sought a number of spaces ideally suited to each exhibition for its uninterrupted exhibition activity.
Ever since we began our exhibition activity, we have pooled our sensitivity and aesthetic skills to create ambiguous individual and collective exhibitions focused on photography, video, and drawing.
Bernal Espacio Galería has instilled unique aspects of contemporary creation into each of its projects. Its exhibitions, which are akin to cabinet and which feature relevant contemporary artists, are an invitation to introspection both with regards to the works and the artists, as well as the exaltation they give rise to among the audience.
Marina Abramović
Portrait as Biography
- Opening: Wednesday, 16 February 4 – 8 PM
Exhibition open since 17 February to 19 March, 2022
Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 2 PM and 4 – 8 PM - La Nave Sánchez-Ubiría
Calle de Valentín Beato 11, Madrid
Bernal Espacio Galería
galeria@bernalespacio.com
+34 669 950 495
www.bernalespacio.com
Acerca Comunicación
Cristina Ruiz
cristina@acercacomunicacion.
