NACHO CRIADO. COLLABORATING AGENTS
Date: December 4 2012 - April 21 2013
Curator: Remo Guidieri
Exhibition Session: Surround Action: Conceptual Peripheries
Exhibition organized by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in association with the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo

In his work, the pioneering Spanish experimental artist Nacho Criado (Mengíbar, Jaén, 1943 - Madrid, 2010) analyzes the material conduct and physical evolution of the object, examining its procedural and spatial aspects. At the beginning of his career in the 1960s, Criado embraced the formal principles of minimalism, but he later transitioned to the use of impoverished, discarded materials with a distinctly Arte Povera feel. Around the same time he also developed an interest in conceptual art, posing questions about the relationship between the idea and its formal materialization, the passage of time, fate, identity and the hybrid nature of artistic praxis.

The Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo is proud to present the first retrospective ever dedicated to this Andalusian artist in his homeland, which showcases the wide variety of artistic practices and media that Criado used throughout his career. He created installations, sculptures, photographs, videos, paintings, performances and other types of pieces, and he explored conceptual art, land art and body art, using them as research tools to investigate the connection between ideas and referents from the past and their materialization, in the process paying tribute to Bruno Taut, Matthias Grünewald, Samuel Beckett, Mark Rothko and others.

The title of the exhibition was borrowed from a statement in which Criado spoke of limiting the artist's intervention in the production of a work to the bare minimum, which would allow the rest of the elements in the world to complete it as collaborating agents: weather conditions, accidents, microorganisms, etc. This conviction preserves each of his pieces as a living element, finished as an object but incomplete as a work of art. By drawing on the oeuvre of artists from the past, Criado himself became a new collaborating agent, reactivating and re-updating their ideas - now enshrined in the history of thought - not as works of art but as a process.

ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION

[Press Dossier. PDF File: 100kb]

[High Resolution Images]

[Photo Album on Flickr]