Although its usual presence in the red carpets of the media circuit increasingly approaching the archetype of ‘celebrity’, the trajectory of Marina Abramovic (1946) remains firmly inscribed in the great art story.
In numerous projects it has managed to take a … Complex exploration of the self –propy and alien – and establish codes that have inspired generations of ‘performers’.
It is enough to remember the emotional discharge of ‘Rhythm 0’ (1974), where he offered his own body to the public as an object of experimentation; ‘Balkan Baroque’ (1997), impressive intervention in which he cleaned a mountain of bones soaked in blood and that The golden lion earned him in Venice; or ‘The artist is present’ (2010), an action of 736 hours during which he remained seated and motionless.
Within this ritualist universe, suffering and intensely scenographic, it might seem that the artistic practice of drawing lacks interest; however, As the retrospective ‘The Cleaner’ (Norway, 2018) revealed, Drawing has been for Abramovic an essential tool to visualize ideas from both art and life, inseparable areas in his poetics.
The ‘Nomadic Journey and the Spirit of Places’ series, which Bernal Espacio presents in Spain, is articulated in a support as varied as singular: Hotel stationery and other temporary residences, collected for four decades. On those letterheads, the artist has transferred pages of drawings Of his historical notebooks, he has drawn unpublished compositions and has integrated typed letters, poems, ‘collages’, photos or scribbles. The project materializes in an artist book and a sample where each sheet translates into a serial digital impression.
The itinerary, deliberately acronological and nomadic, abbreviates in the artist’s cliché as ‘global traveler’, collector of Jet Lags and oblivious to the local reality, so that the connection between the letterhead of a luxurious New York hotel and the annotation of his ‘performance’ in the MOMA remains in an evident wink, without more resonances. The viewer can play to recognize emblematic iconographies – such as animals, knives or quartz – next to schemes that tanta their most famous scenographies.
The most suggestive passages, however, are those elaborated before the Abramovic brand: student notes, cryptic dreams or notes that portray The pompous scenery of the Yugoslavia de Tito, as well as other compositions, hermetic and strange, that insist the process of building their artistic identity.
Marina Abramovic
‘Nomadic Journey …’. Bernal Space. Madrid. C/ San Lorenzo, 3. Until May 31. Three stars.
The result is an interesting set that, although it does not provide an innovative expressive vocabulary, manages to expand the sense of Abramovic’s production in relation to its creative process.
