Artists’ collective Claire Fontaine focuses on reflections about contemporary society, analysing through its works the relationships between spheres of power, the individual and the position of the artist. The proposal for Room 1 revolves around the acronym P.I.G.S., coined by English-speaking financial media to refer pejoratively to Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain since the 2008 economic downturn.
The show consists of three specially produced works. P.I.G.S., which also lends its name to the exhibition, is a representation o... Read more
Artists’ collective Claire Fontaine focuses on reflections about contemporary society, analysing through its works the relationships between spheres of power, the individual and the position of the artist. The proposal for Room 1 revolves around the acronym P.I.G.S., coined by English-speaking financial media to refer pejoratively to Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain since the 2008 economic downturn.
The show consists of three specially produced works. P.I.G.S., which also lends its name to the exhibition, is a representation of this selective map of Europe. Consisting of hundreds of matchsticks, it alludes ironically to the global socio-political instability that is the by-product of the recent financial downturn, at once a poetical comment on the countless lives that have been wasted, truncated and sacrificed by the corruption of the system. P.I.G.S. is ultimately a reminder of how, and to what extent, we are being governed.
CAPITALISM KILLS LOVE (Santa María de León) refers to the multicoloured facade of the MUSAC itself and also to the digitalised colour spectrum of the stained-glass windows of Santa María Cathedral in Leon. The font used in the text is called “K”, a typeface in turn taking its name from the Czech author Franz Kafka, as a tribute to him and to his unfinished work Amerika, which anticipated the political frangibility of the West and of the American Dream. The third work, Private (2010), is an explicit metaphor of the limits we all come up against, as well as a violent reaction against interactive artworks in general. Though visually discreet, being totally horizontal and anti-monumental, acoustically, it is an aggressive and invasive work that interacts with the other two pieces on display on two different levels: it cuts against the grain of their forms, yet conceptually it underscores the very violence that underlies private property by using the sound of the bell, commonly associated with discipline and alarm.
Claire Fontaine. Notas sobre economía libidinal. Journal, 66 pages.
The texts gathered in this publication deal with the financial economy and the affective economy, and expand the field of research proposed in the exhibition. As a whole, “P.I.G.S.” expands our vision of an economic reality that has social and political effects on Europe and on the world, a particular interpretation of contemporary history that involves only the most financially unsound countries, thereby avoiding the responsibilities and the conditions northern European countries are also undergoing due to their own weaknesses and inadequacies.
About Claire Fontaine
Claire Fontaine defines itself as a “readymade artist”. Its works, with a special mention for textual installations (messages, billboards and neon or fluorescent signs) made indistinctively in urban spaces or art galleries, are often underpinned by an open, multiple reflection driven by social critique. Based on devices posing direct questions to the spectators, like Foreigners Everywhere or Please, Come Back, Claire Fontaine’s works can be viewed as exercises analysing relationships between spheres of power, the individual, and the artist’s position within society. As the artists themselves say “Art would simply be a way of paying attention to those interruptions, a space in which to talk about issues that are otherwise buried, an arena for formal intervention not to be seen as a means to liberation so much as a purely aesthetic space. As such, it would hold an enormous potential for criticism of the general organisation of society.”
Since its creation in 2004, Claire Fontaine has earned widespread recognition, exhibiting its works in leading institutions such as Palais de Tokyo in Paris, PS1 in New York and more recently, Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, among other venues.
