L21, Madrid|Palma de Mallorca
For its second consecutive participation in ART-O-RAMA, Spanish gallery L21 will present a solo booth by Cristina Garrido based on her recent project “#JWIITMTESDSA?” (Just what it is that makes today´s exhibitions so different, so appealing?).
She will present a new video piece, created specifically for the fair, based on her ongoing long-term investigation on the speculative nature of contemporary exhibition and art making. Browsing in Internet platforms, such as Contemporary Art Daily, This is Tomorrow, gallery websites and social networks, she has built a digital archive of more than 2.500 images grouped in 21 categories, that correspond to exhibitions all around the world in the past four years, in a quest that would be impossible to witness in person. The video piece will combine this visual material with a selection of opinions by 36 international cultural agents Garrido has interviewed, with the aim of answering the following questions: Is there a real democratization in the use of digital technologies? Who controls these legitimation devices and how far their influence can reach? What role do the various actors of the art system play in making these decisions?
On the outside walls, Cristina Garrido will present some pieces from her new series They are these or they maybe others. We are now taken into a world that is very familiar: the world of computer and smartphone screens. But there is a crucial and intentional difference: here we are, in a physical, palpable space, with light and temperature changes and other shifts that we can only encounter in a place that surpasses the world of the screen.