TERESA SOLAR ABBOUD. MACHINE DREAM BIRD

Curated by Tania Pardo and Claudia Segura.

Two characteristics present throughout the work of Teresa Solar Abboud (Madrid, 1985) are the resistance of language and the morphology of speech. Her work, based on a continuous search for multiple concepts, is expressed by enormous sculptural installations which, in recent years, have become more complex with forms related to resistance, hollowness, the body and bone structure. Although she initially used drawing and video as her primary working tools, over time her work has become increasingly devoted to sculpture and new materials. These, with which she has created a series of forms that draw on elements related to the organic, lead to a world of metaphors related to the flow of currents, voids and the relationship between orifices and hollows.

This project, entitled Machine dream bird, once again alludes to the relationship with matter, language and bodily production. The exhibition focuses on two large installations that encapsulate the research carried out by Teresa Solar Abboud over the last few years. Conceived specifically for the CA2M Museum, the exhibition will span two different spaces on the first floor of the museum with newly produced work displayed alongside previously produced pieces. This is the first time this exhibition has been shown. The first room, in pink, is intended to be a surprising, uterine space, featuring sculptures from the Tunnel Boring Machine  series, with an emphasis on horizontal and vertical constructions by using forms where the softness of the gesture contrasts with the plasticity of the material, thereby underlining one of the ideas that runs through this artist's work; namely, the idea of visual alteration via new systems of colour and forms related to nature itself.

The second space, which is very high and is the museum’s atrium, displays some of the pieces – exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial – suspended from the ceiling, where the comparison of a bone in relation to a kayak is once again present. Also shown here will be some newly produced sculptures that the artist relates to reproductive organs.

The exhibition is like a dialogue between the fictitious and the real, where different ongoing narratives put forward new forms and aesthetic finishes, juxtaposing the effects of nature with industrial style finishes that are smooth and glossy. But it is not only sculpture that has recently featured prominently in Teresa Solar Abboud’s work; drawing also offers a good account of the reflection and organisation that structures the perception and experience of the origin of each form, of each piece and of the relationships produced between them, either drawn or expressed in clay or forged in metal.

This project emerged as a result of the interest shown by the CA2M Museum and MACBA in organising a solo exhibition of Teresa Solar Abboud’s work in order to showcase her output over the last few years. The project is curated by Tania Pardo, Deputy Director of the CA2M Museum, and Claudia Segura, curator of exhibitions and of the MACBA collection. The main idea behind this project is to develop a museography that varies, changes and expands in very different ways in each of its venues.

The project begins with the exhibition at the CA2M Museum as a “space of contraction”, where the artist will install in two pieces specifically designed for these spaces. They will then be shown at the MACBA, and the “space of dilation” phase, where the exhibition will be expanded with new pieces. After the MACBA exhibition, it will travel to Turin to be exhibited at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, where it will be curated by Irene Calderoni, chief curator of the foundation, who will create a new interpretation of her work, while maintaining some of the installations shown at previous venues. Mutating in each venue, the exhibition explores other kinds of inter-institutional complicities where the artist’s practice expands and dilates according to the space in which it is located.

Teresa Solar Abboud’s work is part of the CA2M Museum and MACBA collections.
A bilingual catalogue designed by the Setanta studio will be published at the same time as the exhibition. It will include texts by the exhibition curators Tania Pardo, Claudia Segura and Irene Calderoni together with others by Chus Martinez, Manuela Moscoso as well as a conversation between Cecilia Alemany and the artist Teresa Solar Abboud.

TERESA SOLAR ABBOUD

Teresa Solar Abboud (Madrid, 1985). Lives and works in Madrid. Her work was part of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani. She recently inaugurated a group show at Collegium, Arévalo, curated by Chus Martínez. Her work has featured in the group show Futuros Abundantes with the TBA21 collection, curated by Daniela Zyman at C3A, Córdoba; as well as in the Young Curators Residency Programme of the Fondazione Sandretto, in the group show Si las palabras hablaran/If words could talk, Madrid. In 2021 she took part in the Liverpool Biennial, curated by Manuela Moscoso, with a public art installation at Exchange Flags entitled Osteoclast. She participated in KölnSkulptur #9, curated by Chus Martínez, in Cologne (2017-2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Time of worms at Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona, curated by Julia Morandeira; Big Mouth, within Boundaries, Oozing out at 1646, The Hague; Formas de fuga at Travesía Cuatro Madrid; Pumping Station at Travesía Cuatro CDMX; Ride, Ride, Ride at Matadero Madrid and Index Foundation, Stockholm; and Flotation Line at Der TANK, Institut Kunst in Basel. Group exhibitions include: the Pinchuk Foundation, Kiev; Museo de Arte Abstracto, Cuenca, Spain; Centro Conde Duque, Madrid; Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca; Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain; CA2M, Madrid; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander; Maxxi, Rome; General Public in Berlin; Kunstverein Mün-chen; CA2M, Madrid and La Casa Encendida, Madrid.

TANIA PARDO

Tania Pardo (Madrid, 1976). Deputy Director of the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo and until June 2023 she was Plastic Arts Adviser for the Region of Madrid. A curator and researcher, she holds a degree in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She was Head of the Exhibitions Department at La Casa Encendida (2015-2019), Professor of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid (2014-2019) and is currently a member of the teaching team of the Master’s Degree in Curatorial Studies at the University of Navarra and the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at the Universidad Carlos III.  She also worked as a curator at MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León and head of programming at Laboratorio 987 (2005-2010). Project Director at the Santander Foundation 2016 (2009-2010). She has worked on a number of curatorial projects with different institutions, among them: Sin heroísmos, por favor (Iván Argote-Teresa Solar Abboud-Sara Ramo) at CA2M (March 2012); the programme En Casa at La Casa Encendida (2012); and 1465 Tizas by Maider López at MATADERO Madrid’s Nave 16. She co-directs the Jornadas de Estudio Arte Contemporáneo Español (Helga de Alvear Foundation / La Casa Encendida and Museo Unión FENOSA) as well as the course “Curating the Present” offered at La Casa Encendida since 2012. She has also organised – in collaboration with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UCM’s “Salón de Verano” (July 2014) – projects related to contemporary art and education. She also headed the CAFÉ DOSSIER portfolio viewing project organised by the Ministry of Culture (2013 and 2014) and was the initiator of the Madrid 45 / Line 3 Visual Culture Programme organised by the Region of Madrid (2015-2016). She writes for various specialised media, has been a regular contributor to the El País culture supplement Babelia as an art critic, writes for exhibition catalogues, teaches courses and seminars on Contemporary Art and is a member of various juries for prizes and competitions related to Contemporary Art. She recently curated the exhibition Dialecto CA2M with Manuel Segade, based on the CA2M Collection and Fundación ARCO, and the solo show Casi 400 m2 para dos paisajes by the artist Mitsuo Miura at the CA2M Museum.

CLAUDIA SEGURA

Claudia Segura (Barcelona, 1984) is curator of exhibitions and the collection at MACBA. She holds a degree in Humanities from Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona (2007) and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London (2008). She was director and chief curator of NC-arte in Bogotá (Colombia, 2015-2019), where she curated several site-specific projects by different artists (Amalia Pica, Luis Camnitzer, Xavier Le Roy, Nicolás Paris, Nicolás Consuegra, Los Carpinteros and Alia Farid, among others). She has coordinated cultural projects at the “la Caixa” Foundation in Barcelona (2010-2012), has been an external curator of the Mardin Biennial in Turkey (2014-2015), tutor at the Sala de Arte Joven in Barcelona (2014) and the Cano laboratory at the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Bogotá (2018), as well as visiting professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá (2017). She has curated and co-curated projects such as Hay que saberse infinito, a retrospective of work by Maria José Arjona at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO), Bogotá (2018), The border is you, LA projects, Los Angeles (2017), Límites Nómadas, Bienal de las Fronteras, Mexico (2015), Fifty by Pipilotti Rist from Han Nefkens H+F Collection at collectorspace, Istanbul (2014), and Copy / Paste –  Recoding the gesture at the Cervantes Institute in London, Like Tears in Rain at the Palacio das Artes in Porto, and Producing Urban Order at Goldsmiths University, London (2008). She was the editorial coordinator for Florae 2015 de Flora ars+natura magazine, Bogotá. Segura is a member of the De Vuelta y Vuelta research team, as well as of Para abrir Boca.

This exhibition is a co-production between the Museo CA2M, MACBA and the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation.
 

In collaboration with 1646, The Hague.