39 Tenths
José Luis Alexanco
19 SEP / 26 MAR '23

 Inauguration 19 SEP - 20:00 H. After the masterclass about the exhibition
 September 19 to March 26, 2023
La Caixa" Foundation Room

*Header image: The twenty tenths (1998)

The exhibition 39 Tenths is articulated around the main aspects of José Luis Alexanco's work process between 1964 and 2021. On display for the first time is the fourth Décimo, the result of his artistic residency project Tender Puentes , which he was working on before his death.

In this exhibition, therefore, the four versions of Los Décimos, his audiovisual work, and the key works of drawing, photography, paintings or sculptures, which complement and emphasize the nine acts of Percursum.

It was the artist himself who wanted this exhibition to coincide with his 80th birthday and with the 50th anniversary of the Pamplona '72 Encuentros de Pamplona, which he helped organize as part of the ALEA Collective and in the company of Luis de Pablo, commissioned by the Huarte family. 

THE TENTHS

They are polyptychs of 10 paintings 1.80 x 15 meters each, in which the artist summarized 10 years of his work. Published in 1978, 1998, 2018 and 2021, this is the first time that all four will be shown together. 

The first Tenth was born as a revision of the artist of his own work, a way to integrate in a single piece the journey of his last 10 years of creation. After his trips to Syria and his work in Damascus, his second Tenth arises respecting the same formats and following, as usual in Alexanco, mathematical patterns in its realization. 

The Artistic Direction of the Museum proposed to the artist to realize an exhibition. The intention was to host, in line with the artistic strategy and spirit of the MUN, a project of new creation in dialogue with the artist's work. Alexanco agreed and proposed to realize his fourth Tenth.

In the realization of this last series, shown to the public for the first time, the artist varied the dimensions of the individual pieces but preserved the global dimension of the Tenth. Although death surprised him while he was working on this project, he had time to make 9 pieces that, shown together, respect the dimensions of the three previous Tenths. 

This fourth Tenth offers the visitor a perspective of his creative process since each of the pieces is at a different stage, thus showing the artist's work process in its creation. For its realization Alexanco started from a first impression, usually a scanned drawing regardless of its resolution, as the piece was acquiring definition and precise lines through the different layers that were added in the composition. Cut-outs, wefts, drawings, paint..., layers that fit together until they acquired their final appearance.

PERCURSUM' AND OTHER PIECES

The exhibition includes his key pieces of drawing, photography, paintings and sculptures, as well as the audiovisual work on which he worked for years, Percursum (1964-2020). This film and sound piece, with music by José Tejera Osuna, is a sort of synthesis of his career over more than five decades in which the artist prided himself on having shown his work without having included in it any complete work. 

The exhibition reflects the restless spirit of an artist who was always more attracted to the process than to the result, the infinite capacity of transformation of ideas, creation, data and matter. In M. Veyrat, "Alexanco and the art of the future", we can read: "...the continuous transformation of artistic content determines the need for changes in form. The changes of form determine in turn the content and its basic structures. The effectiveness of Art as a language depends on the evolution of the form-content relationship, and on its ability to communicate, the possible transformation of the future of that historical reality".

BIOGRAPHY

José Luis Alexanco (Madrid, 1942-2021), an artist difficult to classify, is one of the pioneers in the use of technology, linked to computers, as a means of artistic expression. He is considered one of the fathers of Digital Art in Spain.

Together with Luis de Pablo he formed the group ALEA, to whom the Huarte family entrusted the organization of the 1972 Pamplona Encounters, now 50 years old, which brought together 350 avant-garde artists from four continents. Their collaboration with the musician Luis de Pablo gave rise to Soledad Interrumpida, a 'plastic-sound' creation. 

From his beginnings, in the 1960s, his work distanced himself from the Spanish art of the time, reacting against everything in force: figuration in an attempt to dissolve, concern for the narration of a new spatio-temporal dimension and a series of open works. His distance from the art scene was accentuated by his work at the Centro de Cálculo de la Universidad de Madrid (1968-1973) in collaboration with IBM, where he made methacrylate sculptures with a soft air, generated from computer research. 

His work, from his own process, shows a great influence of the forms generated by computer systems, which he later recreated in his painting. 

Between 1968 and 1970, aided by mathematician José Barberá and a system based on topometry, he developed MOUVNT, a software designed to generate automatic shapes. 

His work is part of collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, The Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, MNCARS, Madrid; MACBA, Barcelona or the Juan March Foundation.

The artist died in May 2021 at his home in Madrid while working on this exhibition.

► ROOM SHEET

Exhibition catalog for sale at the Museum's store

RELATED ACTIVITIES

19 OCT / 19:00 H - The artist is on Campus. Masterclass with Sergi Aguilar

04 NOV / 19:00 H - Plano/Contraplano. Encuentros 72. Screening of Sistiaga's documentary with commentary by Manuel Hidalgo.

05 NOV / 10:30 H - Children's workshop. Tenths

05 NOV / 19:00 H - Plan/Contraplan. George Méliès, filmmaker of the possible

10 NOV / 19:00 H - Cómo hacer cosas con... Mathematics with Capi Corrales, Jesús López Fidalgo and Pedro Maisterra

18 NOV / 17:00 H - Workshop for teenagers. Meeting in Pamplona

26 NOV / 10:30 H - Children's workshop. Meeting in Pamplona

15 DEC / 19:00 H - Exposure time. New temporary exercise. Conference with Alfonso de la Torre

The artist himself wished this exhibition to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Encuentros de Pamplona. For this reason, this activity is incorporated into the calendar of the joint program of the Pamplona Meetings 72-22 in which various cultural institutions of the city participate, with which the Museo Universidad de Navarra collaborates.