Pelaires remains faithful to its appointment with ARCO, being one of the few galleries that has participated in all the editions -43 including this one- of the fair held in Madrid. On this occasion it does so by presenting the work of Claudia Peña Salinas, Ana Laura Aláez, Inês Zenha, Gori Mora, Rebecca Horn, Jorinde Voigt, Diego Delas and Oliver Osborne. A compendium of artists that clearly represents the recent exhibition programme of the gallery, since all of them have held individual exhibitions in the last two years.
Pelaires participates in ARCO with a 100 m2 booth, in whose central space the installation work of the Mexican Claudia Peña Salinas (Montemorelos, Mexico, 1975) is proposed. Like other artists born in the 1970s, she reveals a strong commitment to the survival and testimonies of pre-Columbian lands and communities, using indigenous objects and materials to question colonialism and capitalism, in her case focusing on tourist exploitation.
Opposite Peña Salinas, two revisited works by Ana Laura Aláez (Bilbao, 1974) that question the normalized and standardized, the objectified, the dominance of the masculine in history, from the constant reflection on what sculpture really is, using media and disciplines foreign to said language. These pieces are placed in relation to those of two other artists, generationally younger (born in the nineties): Inês Zenha (Lisbon, 1995) and Gori Mora (Porreres, Mallorca, 1992).
Zenha's recent work focuses on the hybrid construction of identity, as an unstable and mutable expression, between the organic/vegetal and the human. She connects with Gori Mora in terms of exploring the formal and conceptual codes of the representation of the queer body. Flanking the entrance to the booth, two large-format paper works on a white background by Rebecca Horn (Michelstadt, Germany, 1944), a visual grammar that is a derivative of her performance art. An obsession with the categories of space, time, direction and speed. Similar parameters of perception are applied by Jorinde Voigt (Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1977) in her papers. Both create a type of drawing that we could call "conceptual", which connects them through the deconstruction of knowledge, of literary, philosophical and musical texts converted into graphics.
Likewise, Pelaires presents three new works by Diego Delas (Aranda de Duero, 1983). As an architect, artist and researcher, his work revolves around the practice of study and fabrication, in regards to the reconstruction, repetition and reinterpretation of a pre-modern culture in regression. Delas questions certain vernacular architectural motifs those related to narrative and magical thinking those that embody notions of a certain modernist impulse.
Oliver Osborne (1985, Edinburgh) closes the booth with two small-format oil paintings on linen. After 10 years working on the well-known "Rubber Plants" series, he presents two portraits of Dutch historical figures from the 15th to the 17th centuries, a direct appropriation that he extrapolates and intersperses with comic book characters, making minimal variations of the portrayed.
Images of the booth in ARCO Madrid. Image by Roberto Ruiz.
