An indepth survey to June Crespo's artistic practice.
Through an unconventional use of casting and molding techniques, June Crespo has developed a sculptural language that questions the attributes, narratives and genealogies associated to materials such as concrete, steel or bronze. In her recent works, the references to the human body and the presence of architectural and botanical motifs respond to a precise mandate: to put into question the distinction between the structural elements and the ornament.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Vieron su casa hacerse campo at the Museo CA2M – Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in 2023, this publication presents an indepth survey to June Crespo's artistic practice and unravels the particular spatial and material relationships that her work brings into play. In addition to graphic documentation of the exhibition, the publication includes documentation of other recent projects, graphic materials specifically produced for this book, and a series of essays written by Aimar Arriola, Sylvia Lavin, Julia Spínola and Marc Navarro, curator of the exhibition.
June Crespo (born 1982 in Pamplona, lives and works in Bilbao) understands sculpture as an exercise that enables her to bring together seemingly opposed qualities. Her works partake equally of the petrean and the perishable, the mechanised and the manual, the abject and the sensuous. The convergence between materials and motifs creates a vocabulary that seems interpretable as a contradiction. On the one hand, certain motifs are taken from industrially produced objects, bearing in mind aspects like ergonomics and formal organicity. On the other, plant and organic motifs appear as the result of highly technical systems of production and representation. Both respond to the exploration of a transitional body-object that, having been fragmented and recomposed, forsakes its original form and meanings. Thus, stalks, busts and conduits are abstracted into channels and carcases that trace a network of connections ranging from the tectonic to the physiological and associated with the domestic sphere and its design as an extension of the body. In this way, notions like human scale, void and gravity are used to establish analogies with the body and to influence the intrinsically spatial, that is, physical, nature of sculpture.
June Crespo graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Universidad del País Vasco (2005) and took part in the De Ateliers residency programme in Amsterdam between 2015 and 2017. Her solo shows include: Acts of Pulse (2022) at P420, Bologna; entre alguien y algo (2022) at CarrerasMugica, Bilbao; Am I an Object (2021) PA///KT (Amsterdam); Helmets (2020) at Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Voy, sí (2020) at Ehrhard Florez (Madrid); No Osso (2019) at Uma Certa Falta de Coêrencia, Porto. She has taken part in group shows such as: The Milk of Dreams, Venice Biennale 2022; Fata Morgana,
Jeu de Paume, Paris, and El sentido de la Escultura at Fundación Miró, Barcelona.
