Praxis is linked to the culture of DIY (do-it-yourself) and stems from the current economic crisis. At the same time, it is a laboratory or experimental workshop that is dynamic and complementary in character and which in itself generates an alternative module to the annual programme.
Founded on the notion of improvisation and underpinned by values such as recycling, process, the relational and above all direct action and DIY, it is intended to ensure that the artist plays a much more active part and puts an end to the prevalence today of the artwork versus the artist-subject. This principal role will be reflected in a number of areas, such as opening up exhibitions to the public from the very start, thereby enabling visitors to witness every step along the way. Praxis will consist of a varied selection of projects that embody an attitude, an initiative inspired by the subculture that emerged alongside the punk movement of the 1970s, in which artists managed their own bands and produced their own albums, creating their own labels as well as their own merchandising, t-shirts, caps, etc., along with their own self-promotional material.
The culture of DIY has expanded exponentially with the rise of multinational corporatism and has almost become a political and social ideology, a doctrine of ‘non-consumerism' applied to art. Praxis intends to reconcile the underground with the institutional, to fight against its own status quo and, at the same time, to bring together globalism and localism. As a result, it has adopted an expression typical of DIY culture: “think global, act local”.

SUPER HEROE EUSKALDUNTZARRA

Super Héroe Euskalduntzarra is conceived as an equestrian monument and is one of an entire series of works made by the Roscubas brothers in polyester. These works, which are markedly ironic and somewhat provocative in character, are portraits of a cast of diverse and disparate people such as athletes, superheroes and Basque figures.
This project provides spectators with the opportunity to witness live the restoration by the artists of this piece from 1979, which is now part of the ARTIUM Collection; to immerse themselves in the artists' workshop and to get a first-hand understanding of the piece and its place in the brothers' career; and to grasp the cultural effervescence of this period.
In purpose, this work was a comic grimace at the debate surrounding Basque art, the famous ‘Basque School' which at that time was in the ascendant, in particular in the realm of sculpture, with artists such as Oteiza and Chillida, Basterretxea, Mendiburu and Ortiz de Elguea. During this period, the Roscubas made a series of works containing allusions to the Lemoiz nuclear power station, which was then being built in this time of dramatic change. Both the rider and the horse of our equestrian monument have deformed and even grotesque features. The rider is dressed in working clothes with a black hood and a kaiku (Basque jacket), on his feet he has sandals and in his hand a mattock, and a instead of a saddle, he sits astride an ikurriña (Basque flag).
To make this sculpture, the artists used polyester, which at that time was seen as an alternative, light and ductile material that contrasted perfectly with the heavier traditional materials such as iron, stone and wood. Along these same subversive lines, the Roscubas challenged the predominance of a more abstract trend in the Basque School of the time by opting to create a figurative monument that was a part of their world: a world in which satire and banality cohabit; a world free from aesthetic and moral prejudices.

Basque art of the 1970s

The project serves as the perfect excuse to look back at a segment of the artistic panorama of the Basque Country in the 1970s, the dying years of the Franco regime and the time of the excited rebirth of culture. An epoch in which aesthetics and politics were identified as a combined whole and in which the ‘regional versus the national' was still a force in artistic circles. There was a break with tradition and new languages were sought, without the need for the creation of new signs that would make it possible to establish an identity for art made in the Basque Country. This was also an era of fanzines, magazines, works and illustrations in which one of the identifying marks was, for example, those black hoods with a broad grin.
There is an evident connection with other phenomena that emerged at the time and which were in turn associated with the ‘praxis' mentioned earlier: fanzines, punk and radical Basque rock. A busy creativity of a utopian air in which political activists, intellectuals and creators—individuals as well as collectives—converged and emerged, their aspiration being to change reality, or the vision of it, through culture. The work of the Roscubas provides a fantastic (literally and figuratively speaking) pretext to revisit this chapter in history and to contextualise a work at a time that proved to be crucial to the development of both Basque and international contemporary art.