Leaflet

Cristina Lucas, Pepo Salazar, Daniel García Andújar and Pilar Albarracín.

Time of Emergencies considers Guernica from an unwonted point of view through the work produced especially for the exhibition by four of the leading Spanish contemporary artists working today, Cristina Lucas, Pepo Salazar, Daniel García Andújar and Pilar Albarracín.
These artists have taken on the role of Picasso and have been commissioned to produce preparatory work for a supposed Guernica, with the particular feature that the backdrop on this occasion will be present-day events and circumstances. The exhibition title refers firstly to José Ramón Amondarain's project Urgencia (Emergency), regarded as the first submission on the iconic painting, which also serves as a metaphor for our current situation. Secondly, it leads us to other approaches on the work and the event that it addresses, which each of the artists will consider in their own individual manner.

Pilar Albarracín (Seville, 1968) takes the stereotypes and clichés concerning Spanish society and uses them to develop a particular iconography that comments ironically on certain codes that still prevail in Spain. Zaldikoren heriotza (La muerte de Zaldiko) (The Death of Zaldiko) is an installation consisting of an audio-visual screening and the stuffed head of a white horse. The horse features not only in Guernica but in many other works by Picasso, and also calls to mind the horses that appear in the Biblical writings on the Apocalypse, a biting metaphor of modern times. In addition, the title of the piece refers to Zaldiko, a kind of centaur—half man, half horse—that is part of Basque mythology.

Daniel García-Andújar (Almoradí, 1966) is an artist, activist and theorist who reflects on the use of technology and constantly questions the information society. In Operación Rügen (Operation Rügen), he purses his archival line of work and dissects historical events related to the Nazi experimentation with carpet bombing in Guernica. Based on his research and discovery of original documents and photographs, the artist has created a multimedia installation in which he explores some of the lesser known aspects of the tragedy, the consequences of which inspired the Spanish Republic to commission Picasso to produce his painting.

The seemingly ingenuous aesthetic of the works by Cristina Lucas (Jaén, 1973) gives critical form to pieces that deal with ideas such as the relationships of power in every ambit, including the economy and finance, and the factors that affect the development of a geopolitical region. At the same time, the artist's work questions various political and social systems. In From the Sky Down, Lucas takes as her starting point the bombing of the town of Guernica and its civilian population, and draws a timeline between it and the attacks of a similar nature that have occurred since then. Lucas employs a ‘tool' characteristic of her modus operandi and presents us with an animated video that maps the way in which the tragedy set a precedent that has spread across the continent.

Pepo Salazar (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1972) generally employs a wide range of codes taken from music, a number of subcultures and political movements, and reinterprets and recontextualises their symbols in order to devise his own myths and to reveal the structures of power that surround the sources he draws on.
For his commission, Salazar has devised a sound installation for which he has composed 3rd WW REQUIEM as a metaphor for the advent of a social conflict, for the idea of a possible third world war that is imminent or which has perhaps already broken out. The artist speaks to us of a battle in which people are dying today, without the need for a blatant military offensive.

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