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THE EXHIBITION:
EVA LOOTZ
Interweave, wrinkle and follow the thread
26/04/2024 - 25/08/2024 Curator: Lola Durán Úcar
© Habitación de Manila, 1993 VEGAP, Donostia / San Sebastián, 2024
The exhibition, curated by Lola Durán, presents 42 pieces produced by Eva Lootz between 1993 and 2013. This representative collection of her work has been divided into five large spaces.
Entre manos
Entre manos [Between Hands] (2011) is a projection that revolves around the theme of knots and the game of cat’s cradle. This string game is a classic form of recreation that has been preserved in our tradition as a children’s game and is likewise an ancestral practice of primitive peoples, where an astonishing variety of figures are made with a rope that is exchanged from one hand to another. She reminds us that all misnamed “primitive peoples” had string games, as well as the fact that the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used the Borromean knot to represent the psychic structure of the speaking being in the analytical experience: registering the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. The video is accompanied by a text from the psychoanalyst and writer Ani Bustamante, along with a selection of Cree Indian poems
Mostrar/nombrar
Mostrar/Nombrar [Show/Name](2011) is a sculpture made of translucent glass consisting of two words that allude to the artist’s constant reflection, the idea that to show is not to name. To show is to make something seen, to show it without the help of words. However, we inscribe that something within an established code in order to name it, and this something is language. To show versus to name, the discrepancy between representation and statement, between the visible and language, the object and the concept.
Nudos e hilos
The series Nudos [Knots] (2013) focuses on threads and strings, acting as a metaphor for the interweaving of affections and language and addressing the problem of the connections between matter and language.
Tú y yo I
The piece Tú y yo I [You and I 1] (1997) comprises a long table for two diners, two chairs and two plates containing the same amount of sand: on one side, the sand remains as it is, conserving its volume and shape; on the other, it becomes apparent over time that both the plate and the table have a hole through which the sand is gradually being lost, spilling onto the floor. There are three large photographs in the same space with the words «tú», «y», «yo» written with a soft candle. The installation evokes the presence of an absence in a space for two non-existent diners engaged in a silent dialogue. It is a reflection on polarity, opposites, dialectics, in essence, a basic pattern of thought present in all types of couples.
Tú y yo II
In Tú y yo II [You and II 2] (2000), pairs of light felt shoes/boots, one light and the other dark, face each other on four fields of fine sand. Voices can be heard coming from each pair, one male and one female, establishing an unconventional dialogue. The three words “tú”, “y”, “yo” are this time present, written in human hair on the walls. The work refers both to the fact of the couple and to a minor use of language whose point of gravity is not in the verb “to be”, as Deleuze viewed the foreign use of language
The exhibition also includes two other audiovisuals: No es más que un pequeño agujero en mi pecho [It Is Nothing More Than a Little Hole in My Chest] (2004) and Blind Spot (2005), which allude to body metaphors, to blind spots, to black holes, to bottomless chasms.
No es más que un pequeño agujero en mi pecho
With No es más que un pequeño agujero en mi pecho (2004), we return to a line of thought that runs throughout Eva Lootz’s work and evokes the duality of presence/absence, the inability to retain, to close.
The title is taken from a poem by Henri Michaux, whose verses speak of an all-swallowing black hole, of silence, of life amidst an emptiness that suggests death. This author leads Eva Lootz to adopt the image of an endless waterfall, where the artist abstractly deposits the incessant sliding of sand, causes and effects, in an inscrutable becoming.
Blind Spot
Blind Spot (2005) projects a dark circular image that evokes its namesake, in other words, the small part of our visual field that our eye does not see. Blind angles refer to that which we cannot see – either literally due to physical impossibility or figuratively – that which we do not perceive because our gaze is conditioned by the dominant discourse. In fact, women were in the blind spot of history for approximately 3,000 years. Habitación de Manila
Upstairs, alongside a number of string drawings, we enter Habitación de Manila [The Manila Room] (1993), a series of pieces made from Manila paper during a stay in Lanzarote, when the artist produced a series of prints that she calls “light pieces”.
They are the nearest thing to making something out of nothing. A paper normally used for wrapping, both light and resistant, which the artist has crumpled into small pieces. Works that recall various kinds of seeds, knotted laces, handles, shoes, etc., which have remained in storage for thirty years and are on display for the first time in this exhibition.
THE ARTIST:
Eva Lootz (Viena, 1940)
Eva Lootz (Viena, 1940) a visual artist belonging to the generation of artists who revitalised the sculpture scene in the 1970s and 1980s through approaches that prioritised literality and the work process, positioning her close to the post-minimalist current.
She studied Philosophy and Plastic Arts and graduated in Film and Television Directing. Commencing from anti-expressive, processual approaches that lean towards broadening the concept of art, she evolved towards creating intersensorial, enveloping spaces or, in her own words, towards “continuous art”. Her work demonstrates a strong interest in the interaction of matter and language and is characterised from the outset by the use of diverse registers.
Eva Lootz was awarded the National Plastic Arts Prize in 1994. Her work has been recognised with awards such as the Tomás Francisco Prieto Prize from the Royal Mint Foundation in 2009, the MAV (Women in the Visual Arts) Prize in 2010, the Art and Patronage Foundation Prize in 2013, the Baron de Forna Prize 2013 from the RABASF, and the Madrid Regional Government’s Plastic Arts Prize in 2022.
Her latest exhibitions include La canción de la tierra [The Song of the Earth] (Tabacalera, Madrid, 2016); Cut Through the Fog (C.G.A.C. Santiago de Compostela, 2016-2017); Binomio, Arte y Ciencia [Art-Science Binomial] (CNIO, Madrid, 2017), and El reverso de los monumentos y la agonía de las lenguas [The Underside of Monuments and the Agony of Tongues] (Patio Herreriano Museum and National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid, 2020).
She has carried out several permanent interventions in public spaces, including NO-MA-DE-JA-DO on the Isla de la Cartuja at Expo’92, Lineo’s Hand in Bohuslän (Sweden 1996) and Endless Flow (Silkeborg, Denmark 2002). She constructed La oreja parlante [The Talking Ear], a piece located on the right bank of the river Ebro for the Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, and recently inaugurated La cama de Penélope [Penelope's Bed], a permanent intervention at Coster d’Art i Natura (Pollença, Mallorca 2022).
MEDIATION:
Guided tours
Every Saturday at 5.30 pm in Basque and 6.30 pm in Spanish Free admission with prior booking by email:
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or on the web site
Workshop Comfortable clothing is recommended. €3 per participant
PUBLIC PROGRAMME:
Eva Lootz’s piece Tú y yo II will be the starting point and guiding thread of the public programme.
Collective writing workshop
Oier Guillan will first lead a two-day creative writing workshop. The workshop participants will engage in a creative dialogue with the piece Tú y yo II in order to produce new written material. To do this, the participants will be offered writing dynamics and games derived from literature and the world of performance,
interspersed with individual and group dynamics. The aim will be to create new textual material that converses with and complements the original piece, respecting the voice of each participant. This material will also be the basis for the physical work of the two actors.
Installation activations
Actor Javier Barandiaran and actress Maite Mugerza will create a stage piece based on the material written by the workshop participants. This new piece will later be performed in the same space where Tú y yo II is installed, creating an artistic dialogue with the piece and coming full circle with the catalysing work of this experience.
GUIDE OF EXHIBITION:
Descard here the guide of exhibition.
@kubokutxa
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