Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024

El Apartamento

22 days left

Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024

El Apartamento

22 days left

Fuentesal Arenillas offer us a selection of works that are, in reality, laboratories of ideas. The type of sculpture they opt for is a reaction to traditional Minimal Art and a sure commitment to tradition, to nobler organic materials, to a less grandiloquent and technocratic vision of the world. Fuentesal Arenillas' cosmos has its origins in the most essential aspects of the human being.
Fuentesal Arenillas propose a type of sculpture that reacts to minimalist sculpture (cold, depersonalised, with industrial materials such as glass, steel or stone). They opt for more noble and warm materials such as wood, textiles, thread, canvas and paper. They seek a type of sculpture that speaks more of the human essence, of affective memory and cultural traditions. They often use working processes directly related to sewing and carpentry and are interested in drawing attention to the value of traditional craftsmanship in the face of contemporary technology. Repetition in the work of Fuentesal Arenillas is of great value. They do not work in series, all the works are unique and each one different from the other, but repeating the same idea allows them to dialogue with each other and to manage in a healthier way the fact of being a duo of artists. They are two, so sometimes they do things 2, 4 or 6 times. Fuentesal Arenillas' work delves into the fields of semiotics and anthropology to structure a type of artwork that is, at the same time, a game, a totem, an archive, and an event. The duo draws on the Dadaist tradition and concrete art to define an imaginary in which the mundane, accidental, and superfluous acquire a quasi-monumental dimension. Fuentesal Arenillas has generated a universe of artistic objects deeply marked by physical and thought duality. Among the defining ideas of their work, we can mention the exploration of a drawing-like volume in which line becomes solid matter, the evolution as a vital event, the mutation of materials, the time as the center of attention, a taste for popular craft traditions in the face of defiant modernity, an interest in the unfinished and often disposable states of the staging of the canon. This peculiar aesthetic means that each object they imagine is an echo of the body, a cell of meaning in which all discussions of the erotics and mysticism of being are stripped of conflict, sexism, or doubleness.
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero
Fuentesal Arenillas & El Apartamento at Frieze London 2024. Photos by Paula Caballero