MMP: Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan

The new work – “Movement in art” – consists on the one hand of three corner constructions and two architectonic “ingrepp” in the museum’s collection, and on the other, of a dialogue with Ulf Linde’s replica of Marcel Duchamp’s “The Large Glass” at the Old Vicarage.

Slipped into Rafael Moneo’s elegant but also authoritarian architecture, the camouflaged constructions round off the rooms’ right-angled corners creating hidden nooks and crannies behind sliding doors. Something between a piece of furniture and a part of the building, they are a reminder of how we perceptually and conceptually experience space. The two architectonic “ingrepp” are based on shifts of time rather than place: the protective grating on two of the windows in the collection are down 24 hours a day during the whole exhibition period instead of just during the night. In this way a kind of cage is formed in the space between window and grating, temporarily catching the view of Stockholm. The artists describe this as a “delay”, an expression that Marcel Duchamp himself used in discussions about “The Large Glass”. Instead of moving an everyday object into the art institution, they place a work of art a replica of one of his ready mades in a room that is temporarily used for art projects that often relate to everyday life and the surrounding reality. At the same time, the artists pose the question: “what is contemporary?” Can a work by Marcel Duchamp be contemporary when it is shown in a space, which during a period of time is reserved for younger artists?

At the centre of Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan’s art lies a fascination with the relationship between private and public, reality and fiction, object and representation. Their work deals with the relationship between the individual and the large structures: political systems, urban plans of large cities, the architecture of exhibition spaces. Most of their work takes place in and around art institutions and belong to a post minimalist tradition, where everything is reduced to its most essential components. There is austerity in both expression and process: every decision carries meaning and is thoroughly considered, nothing is left to chance. Despite its austerity and unobtrusiveness, their work is striking, but it should be experienced on site, with both eye and body. A first-hand experience is especially important since their works are almost impossible to document.

Dolores Zinny (born in Rosario in 1968, lives in New York) and Juan Maidagan (born in Rosario in 1957., lives in New York) will be in Stockholm from June to September 2000 on IASPIS stipends. They recently had a separate show at Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City. Just prior to the Mexico City exhibition they showed “Offside”, a sculpture made especially for a stairway at the New Museum in New York. They have exhibited in Sweden once before, in the group show Clean & Sane at Edsvik Art and Culture in Sollentuna in the summer of 1997.