Vi Avant Garde Tudela Y Ribera 2018

Muralism

‘ARTE URBANO, ESPACIO HUMANO’ (Urban art, human space)

VI International exhibition of contemporary muralism Avant Garde Tudela ‘Arte urbano Espacio humano’ is an international exhibition of contemporary muralism that was organized by the Department of Culture of the City Council of Tudela - EPEL Castel Ruiz. This year Avant Garde Tudela was curated by Jorge Rodríguez Gerada, Arcadi Poch and Javier Gomez Vidal.

In this VI edition, the exhibition opened up to Navarra ́s Ribera region with the participation of the towns of Arguedas and Peralta. Urban art is an incomparable tool for the transformation of the public space. It is a special way to beautify and recover places that were for one reason or another, before the interventions, avoided by passers-by.

It also has an extraordinary capacity to shape the identity of a place in which it lives, its works being elements of the connection between the inhabitants and the spaces that form a part of it.

As one of the curators of this edition, Arcadi Poch, pointed out: "in the street, any work merges with the morphology and geometry of the city: at the artistic level it is an extraordinarily fertile land". This exhibition was committed to an art without limits, for urban creativity and aimed to expose a work that is carried out from an artistic, cultural and social point of view. "If you unite everything", says Poch, "you end up on the street, where the people are".

For this sixth edition, a curating has been carried out based on the variety of artistic techniques and languages. Each selected artist worked with a different method, with the aim of offering a different storyline to the public, a reflection of the contemporary muralism at the highest level.

To make this vision a reality we made interventions by Jorge Rodríguez Gerada, (the creator of Avant Garde Tudela), SpY, Miquel Wert, Kenor and Lucas Milà. The program was completed with the workshops given by Andrea Michaelsson - Btoy, audiovisual exhibition of urban art and muralism, roundtables and conferences in which international and local speakers participated. A program rich in content in the best possible context represented by Tudela, Arguedas, and Peralta. Thanks to this initiative, Tudela has become a reference point in terms of contemporary and urban muralism worldwide, since collections of some of the most relevant figures of the scene form part of it. A whole exercise of shared creativity between citizens and creators that, another year, left a new trail of unforgettable experiences for the citizens of Tudela and its visitors.

More info: avantgardetudela.com

One of the most renowned urban portrait painters in the world who was also the founder of Avant Garde Tudela and has curated all the previous editions. This year's edition he curated it alongside Arcadi Poch, with whom Gerada also made a mural in the small town of Arguedas. His research on the narrative of time and the material he uses has led him to make a portrait of Rufina Aragón, the longest-lived woman in the place of 102 years, for this he has used mineral-based paints, silicates that can stand the test of time like no other painting, a mural that can survive at least 100 years, like Rufina.

Andrea Michaelsson is internationally recognized for her mastery of stencil technique. In recent years she has specialized in the development of colaborative murals. The experiences of shared creativity are of great importance and go far beyond the workshop, involving each participant as the author of its own contribution. For Avant Garde she made three experiences that came together in three collaborative murals, one in Tudela and another two in Peralta and Arguedas. In Tudela on a colaborative mural of Btoy another artist left his mark. Ricardo Nunez, known by the name Slomo incorporated his geometric style and enriched the group's work.

One of the most relevant figures of geometric graffuturism left one of his best pieces of his career in the building of an elementary school in the city of Tudela. His mural represents his connection with electronic music. The last day of the mural he also made a small session of live electronic music for and with the children from thw school. The children and their parents danced to the rhythm of swish swish.

Catalan artist very unknown despite his brilliant career and his great ability to investigate and surprise. Not very often can you be a witness to the beautiful effects of the photochromic paint on a mural in the world of contemporary muralism, which alternate drastically with changes in temperature, and photochromic paint, which alternates with the ultraviolet rays of the sun. In the mural, made in the town of Peralta, you can see a farmer, which refers to the characteristic of cultivating the vegetables in the area known as the Ribera, whose shirt goes from a dark blue to an absolute white covered with vegetables. On the other hand in the background landscape some clouds disappear when the sun hits.

Miquel Wert, a Spanish-Swedish muralist. The search for his own identity has led him to base his work on the search for old photographs that represent concrete values. His photographic inspiration and situationist philosophy have come together in a mural made in Tudela that connects both parts of the wall, a metaphor about the dualism of the walls, creating two images in one. The mural is situated between a playgroundnand and a social dining room called Villa Javier.

The conceptual urban artist has left a mural installation in which 200 surveillance cameras observe everything that happens around the Tudela museum, right beside the mayor's office in the city... This work offers another complex inside in the world of today's contemporary muralism, proposing a deep reflection on what a mural is, questioning it, and at the same time understanding it as an artistic action reflected on the wall that does not need necessarily imply the use of paint.