Intervenció al PavellÓ: Iñaki Bonillas
10.11.05 - 14.01.06 Intervention visible from nightfall to 21:00 h

The Mies van der Rohe Foundation and ProjecteSD are proud to present Intervenció al Pavelló, a project by artist Iñaki Bonillas specifically conceived for the Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.

The link between Iñaki Bonillas´work and architecture is not accidental. From the beginning of his artistic career he´s been developing projects where architecture, the idea of space and light are present. His work Untitled created specifically for Casa Barragan in the context of the exhibition The Air is Blue curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, deserves special mention. In his new Intervention at the Barcelona Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Bonillas presents a subtle intervention. A change in light and colour on one of the walls in the pavilion to recall Luis Barragán architectural conception of color and space. This work also highlights some of the geo-specifics of Bonillas´s artistic practice. It might not particularly show all that well in his work, but both Barragan’s use of color and space have proven to be very influential.

In Bonillas own words: “A trip I took in the cities in Africa and Europe mentioned by Luis Barragán as a source of inspiration for his Escritos y Conversaciones, was the origin of the project which later on I presented at Casa Barragán in the exhibition The Air is blue, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Back in Mexico D.F., I visited some of the works by Barragán, and I ended up noticing a small green blank board, sustained by three legs in the outskirts of the Vallarta de Arboledas school, in Mexico State. Later, back in the city, visiting the house of Barragán in Tacubaya colony, I found a small nail left on the huge white surface of a wall, and I hung on it the picture I previously took from the small green board. Unconciously this small gesture became my contribution to the exhibition at Casa Barragán. Two years later in Barcelona, thinking about the idea behind my own Photography at Casa Barragán, the possibility came up to present an intervention proposal for the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. On my visit there, I noticed a glass wall with much greater luminosity than the rest of the glass walls. It took me several minutes to realize that the wall was a natural lightbox created by an opening on the rooftop. That glass wall, the colour of the light and Barragán himself, came together on my mind to give shape to an intervention project in the pavilion: a “Mexican pink lightbox”.

Iñaki Bonillas (Mexico D.F., 1981)
lives and works in Mexico City. Selected exhibitions: The Air is Blue, Casa Estudio Luis Barragán, México, D.F. (2002), Little Hystory of Photography MUHKA, Antwerp (2003), Utopia Station, 50 Venice Biennial (2003), Los usos de la imagen: fotografía, film y video en La Colección Jumex (2004), and the recent Archivo Muerto, _h4th, México D.F. (2005). His works have been selected by prestigious curators as Hans Ulrich Obrist, Guillermo Santamarina, Jan Hoet, Osvaldo Sánchez and Kevin Power among others.

In parallel to Intervenció al Pavelló, ProjecteSD presents, Archivo JR Plaza, Iñaki Bonillas´ first solo exhibition in Spain. Both proposals approach two different areas in Bonillas work: his reflection around light and time and the work based on the aesthetics of the archive.

Further information:
IÑAKI BONILLAS: ARCHIVO J.R. PLAZA
PROJECTESD
Passatge Mercader 8, baixos 1
08008 Barcelona
T 934 881 360
INFO@PROJECTESD.COM
WWW.PROJECTESD.COM

Opening: November 16th 19:30 h
November 16th to January 14th, 2006
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11:30 - 20:30