PSJM

Exhibition “LÍNEA”: 06.03.2019 – 03.05.2019

LOCATION: Sala De Exposiciones Sabadell-Herrero, Oviedo, Spain/ES

Website

The exhibition brings together six Asturian creators around the artistic plot of the line, an element that has its own category in artistic language. Specifically, six works in different formats, painting, sculpture and installation, which make up a sample are rich in objects and textures.

The exhibition is curated by Ramón Isidoro and has been part of the collaboration series between the Government of Asturias and the institution since 2002. Last year it was renewed  and is now in progress until 2023.

Participating artists are David Martínez, Gabriel Truan, Herminio, Irma Álvarez-Laviada, Faustino Ruiz de la Peña and PSJM (Pablo San José and Cynthia Viera).

Exhibition: 18.10.2018 – 11.11.2018

Opening: 18.10.2018, 18:00

“Biotopías” – Exhibition of PSJM with Basurama, Luna Bengoechea, Carmela García y Santiago Morilla

LOCATION: Gabinete Literario de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Plaza de Carrasco
135002 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria/ES

WEBSITE

An exhibition to bring environmental problems into the public consciousness 

Four artists present their work in the Literary Cabinet of the Gran Canaria curated by PSJM with the aim of bringing environmental issues into public consciousness. The exhibition presents the works of Basurama, Luna Bengoechea, Carmela García y Santiago Morilla, all of them are actively focusing on ecological problems.

“Biotope”, in biology and ecology, refers to an area of uniform environmental conditions that provides vital space for a set of flora and fauna: a living environment. The term “Biotopias” is a neologism that PSJM proposes to poetically characterize aesthetic responses to the situation of the planetary urgency of taking action. Biotopías includes the meaning of biotope, but also relates to the “space theory” of Foucault in which, the French philosopher was distinguishing three classes of spaces: the Topías (the real and daily spaces), the Utopias (the ideal, not (real) spaces) and the Heterotopías (the real spaces, but separated from the daily life).

All the pieces of the exhibition have been created specifically for the occasion.

Four exhibitions:

In Love We Trash. Las Palmas GC it is the last one of a series of projects in which the group Basurama uses the plastic of waste to generate inflatable spaces. Two icons of the consumerist society, the carrier bag of the supermarket and the plastic of packing, are turned into raw material to build a big space based on air produced by fans.

The artist Moon Bengoechea presents ‘Elaeis guineensis’ shows a series of drawings combined with a light installation. It draws our attention to the loss of biodiversity, the disappearance of the habitat of species. Furthermore, it questions the environmental impacts to the pollution of the waters and the air provoked by manmade big fires and by the plantations of palm oil. His work is centered on discovering clean and elegantly finished poetics with certain aspects related to the many risks of our society.

The photographer Carmela García brings the ecofeminism point of view to the exhibition. Her series ‘Paradise’, realized in 2003,  wrapped one of the walls of the room from soil to roof, brings the poetical proclamation of a new world.

‘Locative Breathing’ is the work of Santiago Morilla where a sidecar welded to a bicycle consists of the production of a greenhouse. When visitors walk on the dredge they are closing an autonomous system of breathing. The pipe of breathing connects the mask of the cyclist with the interior of the greenhouse, which acts as a portable filter.

EXHIBITION: 22.03.2018 – 06.05.2018

”BEYOND THE WALL” – PSJM – Group show

LOCATION: Artpace San Antonio, 445 N Main Street, 78205 Texas/USA

Gallery  WEBSITE

Artpace & Contemporary Art Month (CAM) are excited to announce their partnership for the 2018 CAM Perennial Exhibition. Every March San Antonio artists, performers, and curators present the best our community has to offer at art institutions around the city. At the core of Contemporary Art Month’s 2018 Perennial Exhibition is San Antonio’s deep-rooted connection with The Canary Islands, whose settlers arrived in San Antonio in the 18th century.

The 2018 CAM Perennial pairs artists in a cross-cultural exchange between San Antonio and the Canary Islands. The artists were chosen by Canary Islands-based guest curator Adonay Bermudez for an exhibition in Artpace’s Hudson Showroom. As part of this exchange, the exhibition will travel to The Canary Islands after its conclusion as the CAM Perennial at Artpace.

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 22, 5-9pm
Exhibition on View: March 22-May 6, 2018

2018 CAM Perennial Artists
San Antonio-based artists
Hayfer Brea (Caracas, Venezuela, b. 1975)
Barbara Miñarro (Monterrey, Mexico, b. 1994)
Ethel Shipton (Laredo, Texas, b. 1963)

Canary Islands-based artists
Luna Bengoechea (Gran Canaria, Spain. b. 1984)
Francis Naranjo (Gran Canaria, Spain. b. 1961)
PSJM, Cynthia Viera & Pablo San José (Las Palmas G.C., Spain b. 1973. & Mieres, Spain, b. 1969)

Go to Artist Portfolio

Exhibition: 08.12.2017 – 08.01.2018

“Oligocracy. An absolutely cynical advertising campaign.” –  PSJM – solo show
LOCATION: Sorbonne Artgallery, 12 Place du Panthéon, Aile Soufflot – RDC, 75005 Paris/FR

Museum WEBSITE

For its project Oligocracy, PSJM uses rhetorical-aesthetic strategies in order to highlight what is hidden in broad daylight: the current capitalist system and its sister, liberal democracy, present themselves as the power of the many (neo-liberals call it “consumer power”), while the real power is actually in the hands of a few, namely a handful of brands that operate as shields for conglomerates.

Oligocracy brings together nine compositions representing current Big Three brands. The Big Three, which originally referred to the major brands of the automobile industry (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors), is a term commonly used in the business world to designate the three leading companies in a given sector. PSJM’s compositions assemble and combine these brands to create a contemporary emblem evoking some sort of new feudalism, an idea expanded by Jean Ziegler in “The Empire of Shame” and “The New Masters of the World”.

The display of the work was specifically adapted to the Pantheon-Sorbonne location, where Sorbonne Artgallery is located. The sumptuous architecture of the space is particularly suitable to establish a link with another theme implicit in the aesthetic composition of the project: the relationship between power and knowledge, which Foucault rendered clear in his genealogies and archeology of knowledge. In Oligocracy, as in all of PSJM’s projects, the artists embrace a multitude of references and unfold several levels of meaning, which guide their aesthetic decisions. The gold lettering refers to gold as a symbol of political power and economic power; the black silk that serves as a backdrop to the new “feudal emblems” of the Big Three embodies a model of capitalist domination, which submits the citizen through the promise of comfort and luxury. Ambitious advertising leads to a fundamental ideological deception, convincing consumers that everyone can have access to luxury (a false democratization of luxury). Capitalist power caresses you while you succumb to it: it is no coincidence that the font chosen for the word “Oligocracy” is Champagne & Limousines.

The promise of democratic luxury and the concealment of a system (oligarchy) by another (democracy) through the rhetoric of power is at the root of this aesthetic project about political economy. The Sorbonne Artgallery frames where the work is displayed seem particularly suitable for advertising images -they are indeed reminiscent of advertising billboards, whose European tycoon JC Decaux is headquartered in Paris-. But not for any advertising image, since the architectural environment of the Sorbonne commands a reflection on the associations between power, knowledge, economy, politics and aesthetics that can not be shown otherwise than as a form of silky, yet obscure domination.

With this project, PSJM returns to its critique of the ideological universe of brands. This is quite significant given the censorship to which the artists were subjected to recently*, bringing once more the power of the business world to the center of their aesthetic and political concerns.

PSJM is a team of creation, theory and management formed by Cynthia Viera (Las Palmas G.C., 1973) and Pablo San José (Mieres, 1969). PSJM present themselves as an art brand, thus appropriating the procedures and strategies of advanced capitalism to subvert their symbolic structures.

Go to Artist Portfolio

Exhibition: 01.10.2017 – 31.10.2017

“Superdemocracy – The Senate of Things” – group exhibition with PSJM 
LOCATION: M HKA MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ANTWERP, Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerp/ BL
Exhibition WEBSITE |Museum WEBSITE

Curated by Bart De Baere, Pierre Olivier-Rollin, Paul Dujardin.

The exhibition SUPERDEMOCRACY engages with the collections of M HKA (Antwerp) and BPS22 (Charleroi). The exhibitions allows the voices of individual artists – both nationally and internationally – and citizens to be heard on important themes associated with the Senate and democracy. SUPERDEMOCRACY takes place in the Senate, following a path granting visitors access to prestigious places, such as the peristylium and the hemisphere, or exclusive ones like the presidential salons, the salon of the ambassadors, the office of the registrar, etc.

PSJM acts as a commercial cutting-edge art brand. Their work questions the economic reality with an interdisciplinary and critical practice emphasizing spectacular seduction techniques of late capitalism. PSJM concentrate on creating paintings of various sizes and media including lacquered aluminum, laminate on wood, acrylic on natural linen and gouache or ink on paper. In addition, the artist duo has expanded its creative work to sculptures, mural paintings and videos focusing on economy and society.
Their work has been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, USA, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Russia and South Korea – including “Beyond the Tropics” within the context of the 56th Venice Biennale, PS1- MOMA, New York; Riflemaker Gallery; Fundació Joan Miró etc.
In parallel to their visual research, carrying out an intense theoretical and literary activity, they have published the novel “La Isla de Hidrógeno” (Empatía, Madrid, 2010) and the books “Neutralizados” (Empatía, Madrid, 2009), “Fuego amigo. Dialéctica del arte político en el capitalismo total” (Cendeac, Murcia, 2015) and, in collaboration with José Mª Durán, “Total Market: Mercado Total” (AURAL EDICIONES, Alicante, 2015).
PSJM’s works have been included in “Art & Agenda: Political Art and Activism” (Gestalten, Berlin, 2011) and in “Younger than Jesus. Artist Directory. The essential handbook to the future of art” published by the New Museum (Phaidon, NY, 2012), “Arte Español Contemporáneo 1992-2013” (La Fábrica, Madrid, 2014) and “Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design” (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2014).

Participating artists: Marina Abramovic & Ulay, Suchan Kinoshita, Marcel Broodthaers, Jan van Imshoot, Michel Francois, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, Francois Curlet, Jet Geys, Thierry Verbeke, Sheela Gowda, Emilio López-Menchero, Ria Pacquée, Sasha Pirogova, ORLAN, Tapta, Liliane Vertessen, Denmark, Guy Mees, Edith Dekyndt, Luc Deleu, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Victor Alimpiev & Marian Zhunin, Christophe Terlinden, Jean-Francois Octave, Taus Makhacheva, Miriam Cahn, Johanna Kanel, Yang Zhenzhong, Charlotte Ueaudry, Koka Ramishvili, Kendeli Geers, René Heyvaert, Narcisse Tordoir, Willi Filz, Vase Colton, Marcel Bernger, Marthe Wéry, Carla Arocha, Véronique Vercheval, Vanessa vVan Obberghen, Angel Vergara.