PAVILION OF SPAIN at the 58th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia

Client - AECID Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation



PAVILION OF SPAIN
at the 58thInternational Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia
Curated by Peio Aguirre.
With the participation of the artists Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego.
From May 11th to the 24thof November 2019  

​The Pavilion of Spain at the 58thInternational Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is to be curated by Peio Aguirre in an unprecendented project which, for the first time, will unify the works of the artists Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego. Aguirre’s proposal comprises, through new creations, the practice of both artists over the last ten years. 

Since the early 1990´s, Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego have created works marked by aesthetical coherence searching for limits to do with the representation of the body. With simplistic material resources, they createpowerful and austere artwork, complex in its simplicity. For their first exhibition together, the main symbol and the pass line consists in opening and expanding the space by means of “an occupation” which is, in reality, just the opposite, an act of eviction or emptying. The work of Itziar Okariz is characterised by actions that question the rules of language and the making of symbols which define us as subjects. Through text, video and sound, her work cross-examines movement concerning the subject, its language and its physical presence. The work of Sergio Pregoexplores the nature of the sculpturein so far as arquitecture, questioning materiality with lightweight and flexible materials which allow the work to exist as only one specific state, or as the result of continuous action on the material. Both artists reiterate the alternative functions of the body in our technified society.   

Photo: ITZIAR OKARIZ, Las estatuas (2018-2019), video frame.