Perforated by Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego

Perforated by Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego is the project curated by Peio Aguirre, presenting Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego as the main artists for the Pavilion of Spain at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. An exhibition which proposes a perforation, metaphorically and literally, through performance, sound, image, sculpture and architecture. Sergio Prego’s project will occupy the Pavilion of Spain with a sculpture set in harmony with the Venetian landscape and its vegetation. While Okariz’s work will be located indoors, becoming the largest sound and performance installation that has taken place in the Spanish Pavilion. Moreover, for the opening days, the artist has developed a performance program.

The main gesture and thought behind Perforated by consists in the opening, widening of space from an occupation which in reality is its own opposite, a clearing out or emptying. Any body in the interior of an empty space generates a tension with the space in which it is introduced, as the enveloping volume of the architecture gives us back the minimal materiality of the body. The main feature of Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego’s art is the principle of continuum as inseparable, in this body-space relationship, translated into an austere and powerful body of work, complex in its simplicity.

Susan Sontag wrote in her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence” that “not only does silence exist in a world full of speech and other sounds, but any given silence takes its identity as a stretch of time being perforated by sound.” Aguirre’s project title sets off from the meaning of the verb to perforate, which means to partially pierce through something, a thing, an image or a space, penetrating, but allowing for a glimpse of what had been there in the first place. The space in the Pavilion, both interior as well as exterior, shall be perforated by Okariz and Prego’s works of performance, sound, image, sculpture and architecture.

Itziar Okariz’s art is characterized by actions that question the norm to do with language and the production of the symbols which define us as individual subjects. She approaches the private and public space from a feminist perspective.

In The Statues (2018-2019) the artist presents conversations in a low voice, murmuring, and confrontation she has with figures and objects of art. Through direct confrontation with inanimate objects, these are hence endowed with a soul, life and subjectivity. The content of these conversations and prolonged stances before inanimate objects is the fruit of a strong, subjective and difficult relationship to convey; she defies common sense and favors the inner-story and personal and intimate ways in which we interact with objects and art. These one on ones are developed in the public space of museums. The images and texts, however, do not necessarily reflect what went on, posing a deliberation on documentation and corresponding manifestation. This decoupling of sound, image and text, delves into the displacement between the subject of language and its corporal presence. The action works as a fragmented narration based on that which is omitted, not seen nor heard. These engagements with objects are extended throughout the period that La Biennale lasts, the works are ever changing, giving the spectator the impression of being before a living work of art, a piece in process which is not yet completed. Two sculptures present in the Pavillion, a statue by Jorge Oteiza in 1948, as well as another contemporary sculpture by Peruvian artist Armando Andrade Tudela, serve as help to the artist in continuing with these conversations. Okariz explores the ontological character of objects and the anthropomorphism of forms in art.

In Oceanic Breathing (2018-2019) the physical space of the exhibition and the viewer, become a resonating chamber. The artist and another performer execute a series of intervallic respiratory exercises in front of a microphone which propagates the sound of breathing throughout the surrounding space. This performance, together with other actions, is developed in a program which shall take place throughout the days of the opening. Together with these artworks, an unprecedented video of the series To Pee in Public and Private Spaces (2001 – 2006) questions the use of gender conventions and the performance of masculinity. This video critically questions the regime of the norm, the use of public and private spaces, what is permitted and what is not, using as a basis the elaboration of a feminist and queer imaginary.

Sergio Prego, on the premises of artistic strategies from the 60’s and 70’s, redefines the relationships of art and the exhibition space, artistic object and the aesthetic experience. Apart from the body, it is essential to take the material and the autonomy of the Postminimalist sculpture into consideration. Sculpture has traditionally been the most suitable medium in exploring the nature of the body and how it relates to space and time. This sculptural quality is extended into other means, such as video and drawing, with which he attempts to transgress the tradition of form and its limits. The artist pushes the limits of sculpture with constructions that are generally ephemeral or detachable, basic geometrical volumes and non-conventional materials, which are often fabricated on site. His artwork made from pneumatic membranes –as poems in space, breathing – explore the nature of the ties uniting sculpture and architecture, calling materiality into question due to its elaboration with flexible and lightweight materials that allow for the existence of form only in a specific state, or as a consequence of a continuous action on the materials it is composed of. Air becomes a tool that molds shapes. Also water, cement or synthetic resin. Pneumatic sculpture has to do with the emptying of space; how an element occupies a space which is simultaneously being vacated, emptied, allowing for the occupation of it by people and spectators. However, this pneumatic sculpture project is present in the exhibition through a model that reflects the initial project proposed by Prego for the Pavilion, suggesting an alternative use of space and architecture.

His artistic answer to this emptying of space takes place in the garden or rear façade of the Pavilion, through site-specific sculpture where the capacity of the fluidity of water and other elements is shown. In consideration of the context and architecture of the Pavillion, a formal investigation is added about the principle of “plasticity” and the organic. This plasticity has to do with giving shape and receiving it. This sculptural work is made up of a “puzzled” garden, all the while in harmony with the Venetian landscape, its vegetation, and the flowing character of water. This investigation is complemented with drawings which illustrate botanical and natural specimens, corporal organs and other interstitial forms, biological and sexual.