ARTIUM presents the exhibition by Santiago Sierra NO, Global Tour

press release

Lower East Gallery, from February 26 to May 1, 2011
Produced by ARTIUM (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
Exhibition catalogue: Texts by Francisco Javier San Martín, Pilar Villela Mascaró and Christian Domínguez
Programme for the inauguration on Friday, February 25
World premiere of the film NO, Global Tour. 6 PM. Auditorium of ARTIUM
Following this, a performance by Santiago Sierra in the gallery
The exhibition opens at:  8 PM
Publication of the work: NO (cast iron, Arial typography, 250 mm in height and 45 mm deep). Publication of 50 numbered copies.

ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, presents the exhibition NO, Global Tour, by Santiago Sierra (Lower East Gallery, from February 26 to May 1, 2011). The exhibition comprises the project developed by this Madrid-born artist, now resident in Mexico, since a large-size, black NO, mounted on a truck, began a journey, in the summer of 2009, to the major centres of power and the rundown urban residential and industrial estates of the developed world, specifically Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan. The exhibition includes the publication of a catalogue containing contributions by Francisco Javier San Martín, Pilar Villela Mascaró and Christian Domínguez. Prior to the inauguration of the exhibition, the film NO, Global Tour will be shown for the first time since its premiere at the Berlinale, and there will be a performance by Santiago Sierra.

Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 1966) began his project NO, Global Tour in the summer of 2009: Starting out in the Italian city of Lucca, for more than one year, an enormous, black NO, 4 m wide and more than 3 m tall, mounted on a truck, followed a route through dozens of cities of the so-called developed world. The global NO of Sierra is, as Javier San Martín indicates in the exhibition catalogue, “a profound rejection, harder to express and impossible to specify: a rejection of the idea of improvement itself, of the vain illusion of hope; a failure of belief. (…) with NO, Sierra (…) has reached an aesthetic of zero hope, which allows him to denounce that army of little dreams, of the shoots of the future, which the power of the State is using to poison people …”.

The NO by Santiago Sierra has, for the best part of a year and a half, travelled to different cities in Europe, United States, Canada and Japan. There, it visited the centres of economic power, such as Wall Street and the Rockefeller Center, and of political power such as the UNO building and the headquarters of the European Union in Maastricht; rundown industrial and residential areas such as the mining areas of the former German Democratic Republic or the once prosperous Detroit; icons of religious power such as the Lourdes Sanctuary and of luxury Tourism such as the Palace and Casino at Monte Carlo; oil refineries and arms factories …
Sierra also said NO to cultural and artistic events such as the Nuite Blanche in Toronto, the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, the Performa 09 festival of Nueva York, the ARCO 2010 art fair in Madrid, the Aichi triennial in Japan and the 2010 International Sculpture Biennial of Carrara, for which he created a different NO, in white marble, which from this year forms part of the ARTIUM Collection.
The exhibition
NO, Global Tour has now reached ARTIUM of Vitoria-Gasteiz with an installation featuring the centrepiece of this journey, the huge black NO, set up against the main, white facade the Centre-Museum, and with an exhibition in the Lower East Gallery. On entering the gallery, visitors will first come across the marble NO that Sierra created for the Carrara Biennial. Nevertheless, its perfect lines and the purity of the material, the definitive paradigm of the sculptural tradition, will be blurred to convert the piece into an organic, formless object thanks to the generous coat of Vaseline that Santiago Sierra will apply in the performance made on the occasion of the inauguration of the exhibition.

When visitors stand in the threshold of the second exhibition space within the gallery, they will see an anamorphosis (painting or drawing that depicts a deformed/confused, or regular/finished image, depending on the angle from which one looks at it) which represents an enormous NO that occupies the floor and walls, only perceptible from that precise place. On crossing the Gallery one finally reaches a small projection room in which visitors can see the film NO, Global Tour, for the first time since its premiere at this year's Berlinale, a kind of minimalist road movie which documents the journey of the sculpture. As San Martín indicates, “the sculpture is the centrepiece of the film but in those shots in which it does not appear, it often seems that it is the sculpture itself that operates like a subjective camera. (…) NO (…) highlights the alienation of people, the triviality of places, the tragedy of the economic system, the farce of social organisation".

On leaving the gallery and on the way back from the anamorphosis, visitors can see a selection of 20 photographs depicting different scenes in which NO has been the centre of attention. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published jointly by ARTIUM and Ars Cameralis Superioris, the organiser of the Silesia Arts Festival in Poland.
 

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