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Free entrance

Cristina Garrido. "Boothworks"

Exhibition Temporary

Cristina Garrido. "Boothworks"

Passada

16/06/2023 - 3/09/2023

Cristina Garrido - MAMT

How does our perception change depending on whether we are in a studio, a museum, a gallery or a fair? What elements concur to modify our experience?

Boothworks, by Cristina Garrido (Madrid, 1986), is a project that explores the relationship between contemporary art and fairs. It does so ironically and scathingly, and raises questions that concern any viewer.

Through resources such as appropriationism and archaeology, Cristina Garrido investigates fairs and the rhetorical elements that accompany and frame works of art. His proposals, two videos and a series of works on paper, propose an explicit manipulation of the collected materials, in such a way that they show the mechanisms that influence the perception of the viewer.

A fair stand full of works by different authors becomes a work of art in itself, as if it were a painting or a tapestry. A voice-over and a professional guide offer us a convincing account of what we see. In his collages, the montage of images displaces seemingly antagonistic contexts; while his videos, also constructed as collages of pre-existing references and material, emphasize the specific language of contemporary art, which validates and, together with the place that hosts them, influences our reading.

Cristina Garrido seems to be warning us that culture cannot be harnessed through simple transmission. And, perhaps even more important, that in ever faster times and with an ever wider offer, it is easy to confuse knowledge (which requires a slow and deep dialogue with otherness, so substantial in any work of art) with recognition (which is fast and superficial, it is activated with a glance and a flash of attention, which lasts just to hear "something that sounds to us").

The works in this exhibition emphasize, precisely, evidenced in a parodic way, the mechanisms that determine our perception and that, many times, go unnoticed.

By presenting these works in the rooms of a museum, as well as in his collages the fair stands are installed without any modification in large art centers (recognizable by their architecture), Garrido inevitably questions the role of the institution and allows us to formulate relevant questions, which may be able to save us from being passive spectators, that is, mere consumers of culture.

What is the relationship between museums and the market?
Faced with the proliferation and acceleration of the current cultural offer, what can public institutions offer us?

Francesco Giaveri