Four artist's posters.
The 2/5 series falls into the
artist's publications category published by Captures. Four guests per year work within the same space of an open A2 format sheet (420 x 594mm), giving rise to various proposals depending on how the sheet is folded. The four titles are distributed together in an envelope at the end of each year.
Drawing, typography and graphic design are the tools used by Francesc Ruiz (born 1971, lives and works in Barcelona) to modify the publications that he mobilises in his installations, which for several years have tended towards architectural structures such as kiosks, bookshops, record shops or libraries.
Francesc Ruiz is fascinated by the aesthetic of the comic books of which he has been an avid reader since childhood, and he is particularly interested in their narrative construction and the complexity of social systems conveyed by this aesthetic.
Erotic and homosexual comic books in particular enable him to deal with issues such as censorship and creative freedom and thus to examine the evolution of social and individual identities. In parallel to his socio-political explorations Francesc Ruiz takes a more general interest, through the press and comic books, in the various aspects of popular culture which dissimulate their subversive nature behind amusing façades.
Àngels Ribé (born 1943 in Barcelona) is a Spanish conceptual artist. She is part of a generation of artists who embarked on their careers in the late sixties, in the midst of profound political and social changes that had a direct impact on the way artistic practice is conceived. Shedding the status of autonomous aesthetic entity that it had laid claim to during modernity, the work of art opened up to a process of dematerialisation and socialisation that brought about new relationships with the spectator, the art institution and the market.
In 1967, stifled by the oppressive atmosphere of Barcelona, Àngels Ribé left for France to study sociology. Settling in Paris, she participated in the May 1968 movements and soon began working in the studio of the sculptor Piotr Kowalski. By this time, she had discovered her artistic vocation. In 1969, she publicly presented her first installation, Laberint: a circular labyrinth made of transparent yellow plastic that turned the exhibition space into a flowing stage of paths improvised by the spectators.
In the seventies, Ribé moved to the United States (Chicago and New York) and came into contact with a series of alternative art spaces that reflected the emerging art scene. It was then that she consolidated the basic elements of the artistic grammar which had started to take shape in her Parisian period, and that her de-emphasising of the object became apparent. Ribé created ephemeral installations and performances, which she documented poetically through photography. Her body was the nexus of extremely medited actions, in which natural processes and elements played a key role. Ribé essentially engages with nature through two paths: one more immediate and sensorial, linked to physical expressions, and another more abstract path in which geometry is the organising principle.
In the eighties, Ribé returned to Spain and revived her interest in the objectual nature of the artwork and its sculptural embodiment. She began working with iron and—from 2000 on—with neon lights—which re-connected her to the incorporeal nature of light and space –, and at the same time produced an extensive body of graphic work.
Polly E. Apfelbaum (born 1955 in Abington, Pennsylvania) is an American artist, who is primarily known for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings". Featuring large-scale installations of textiles, ceramics and drawings, the work of Polly Apfelbaum is framed by wider political contexts and the legacy of post-war American art. Apfelbaum combines a variety of media with eye-catching colours and patterns to blur the lines between painting, sculpture and installation, while also exploring the boundaries between art and handicraft. She chooses materials, such as textiles and ceramics, that are usually found in the domestic realm, and emphasises their essential qualities, especially colour and texture. In this way, Apfelbaum assumes a political and feminist position, challenging hierarchies in cultural practice.
Born 1963, Claude Closky lives in Paris. He works with different medias (video, photography, internet, painting...).
His work was presented at the Bass Museum, Miami (2005), the Busan MoMA, Busan (2005), the CCA, Glasgow (1996), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006), the GEM, The Hague (2005), Location One, New York (2003), the Ludwig Museum, Köln (2005), at the Madre, Napoli (2007), the
Migros Museum, Zürich (2002), the Miro Foundation, Barcelona (2004), the Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana (2000), the Musée d'art moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2006), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya (1997), Oca, Sao Paulo (2001), the Tate Liverpool (2003), the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2006), etc.
He has participated to the Biennial in Lyon (1995), Rotterdam (photo 2003), Sharjah (2005), Sydney (1996), Taïwan (2000), Valence (2001), Venise (2001), etc.