Saturday 6 July 2013

FELIPE MUJICA 'UNTITLED (FOR NEWCASTLE)' A BANNER FOR NEWCASTLE'S THEATRE ROYAL, AS PART OF ¡VAMOS! FESITVA


Felipe Mujica 'Untitled (For Newcastle)' banner at Newcastle's Theatre Royal commissioned by Pablo Leon de la Barra for ¡Vamos! Festival

Felipe Mujica standing outside Newcastle's Theatre Royal 




views of the banner from the columnade and from inside Theatre Royal


Pablo Leon de la Barra and Felipe Mujica giving a talk about Mujica's work at http://thenewbridgeproject.com/

Felipe Mujica
Untitled (for Newcastle)
a public commission for Newcastle's Theatre Royal 
comissioned by Pablo Leon de la Barra for ¡Vamos! Festival

Untitled (for Newcastle) is Mujica’s first commissioned public art piece at Newcastle's Theatre Royal. The Theatre Royal is a Grade I listed building situated on Grey Street in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was designed by local architects John and Benjamin Green as part of Richard Grainger's grand design for the centre of Newcastle, and was opened on 20 February 1837 with a performance of The Merchant of Venice. Although Mujica has created many fragile and temporal architectural installations with fabric panels - which always consider their spatial placement and situation as well as the involvement of the viewer within these newly created spaces - this would be Mujica’s first intervention to a historically relevant building and also done in such a scale. In conversations with the artists he explains that he is “… curious to see and learn how the banners will interact with the building, which belong to what we could say a previous cultural era. In this sense I am trying to confront two moments of art history, one represented by the building and one by my banners. I hope the viewers would be able to read and enjoy this. They are also just shapes and colors floating up in the air… which are also two sided, they hopefully affect the seriousness of the building, hopefully the day to day approach that people might have with it.” 

Other events in which Mujica will take part of consist in a talk at the New Bridge Project Space, Newcastle (Tuesday July 2 at 730pm); a modernist sculptural workshop with Children at the Hotspur School, Newcastle (Wednesday July 3) and he has also produced a psychedelic/op art based poster, in an edition of 300, which is free and available to the public.

Felipe Mujica is a Chilean born artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work is conformed by parallel lines of investigation - silkscreen prints and drawings, ephemeral sculptures, installations and collaboration projects - that are constantly and intentionally intertwine. His work has grown from visual codes linked to geometric abstraction, where the economic devices of image making are simultaneously an historical set of references and a set of creative tools. An example would be installations Mujica has produced with fabric panels; which aim to be drawings that occupy space and also curtains that function as space organizers, as temporary walls that canalize the public’s circulation and perception of space as well as the perception of other possible art works in space. In this sense these installations are both an object of contemplation as well as a functional device, they become exhibition design and flexible temporary architecture.

Felipe Mujica (Santiago, Chile, 1974) studied art at the Universidad Católica de Chile. He is part of the generation of artists that grew and initiated their work in the post-Pinochet Chile of the 1990’s. Surrounded by a booming economic and social environment this generation of artists found themselves in the need of collaborating and self-producing exhibitions due to the lack of strong cultural institutions (both public and private). In 1997 Felipe co-founds the artist run space Galería Chilena (GCH), which operated between 1999 and 2005, first a nomadic and commercial art gallery and later as a collaborative art project, a curatorial “experiment”. In 2000 Mujica immigrates to New York. Since 2007 he manages the web site www.lanubeloca.org, which serves as an information platform of current and past collaboration projects. Recent group shows include “Del buen salvaje al conceptual revolucionario”, Travesia 4, Madrid (2013); “Parque industrial”, Galería Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo (2012); “Contaminaciones Contemporáneas”, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo - Universidad de Chile and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Universidad de Sao Paulo (2012-2010); “Critical Complicity”, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2010); “The Nature of Things - Biennial of the Americas”, Denver (2010); "Third Guangzhou Triennial", Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2008) and "Linea de Hormigas", A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2007). He has also exhibited individually at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City; Galería Nuno Centeno, Porto; Christinger De Mayo, Zürich; Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago; The Shop - Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing; Message Salon, Zürich; and Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne. He is currently preparing his first museum solo exhibition to be held at Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, in the fall of 2014.

Visit Felipe Mujica's webpage

Visit Vamos Festival website:
http://www.vamosfestival.com/

Supported by Arts Council England
With thanks to Theatre Royal Newcastle and Carol Bell at NGI

*****


Felipe Mujica's Modernist Sculptural workshop with Children at the Hotspur School, Newcastle
This workshop with children consisted in the collaborative building of modernist-like sculptures with wood sticks, which can be colored and attached to each other by insulation tape. The workshop is organic in nature, meaning that there are basic tools and instructions to be used yet the nature of the final sculptures depends on what kind of collaboration effort is taken by the students. A first stage happen indoors and a second stage outdoors, confronting the sculptures with the children's natural surroundings. (with thanks to Miles Wallis-Clarke)

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