Bilbao-based art gallery SC Gallery is currently celebrating its 8th anniversary with "Disused Spaces," a group show featuring Deih, Franco Fasoli (JAZ), Michael Grudziecki and Smithe. The exhibition presents a series of paintings by four artists who show reflections about different ideas and meanings of “space” and its conditions and use situations.
In their own pictorial styles, each of the artists in this exhibition addresses the connecting theme of space. Thus, Deih focuses on outer or interstellar space, which he also considers inner space; Franco Fasoli JAZ explores leisure space in connection with violent popular rituals; Michael Grudziecki delves into urban or architectural space regarding its functionality and as a reflection of society; and Smithe touches anatomic space as related to existence, thought, and the tyranny of the system. These artists reflect about space and the effect of time on how we use or disuse these spaces.
By using the expression “disused spaces”, this exhibition focuses on the potential of spaces to transcend pre-established meanings and contexts. The diverse interpretations of space by these artists from different countries and cultural perspectives ultimately show that there is a universal anthropological substrate and that the use or disuse of inner or outer spaces is a feature that everyone shares to navigate through life in this planet. This is why this is a transnational exhibition, as transnational are those relations, structures and phenomena that go beyond borders. Things transnational occur above and independently of borders, whether they are inner or outer.
This is the approach of four initiatives that aim to create a dialogue between space and its use, as well as showing together through art different meanings of space, inviting us to reflect and create contexts of individual and collective engagement with the spaces that we all use... or disuse.