Asier Mendizabal, a visual artist born in Ordizia in 1973, is involved in several educational projects as well as being a sculpture teacher at KKH, the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
His work developed from an early interest in the way in which the reconstruction of Basque culture in the 20th century adopted the language of abstraction through a singular translation into popular and political uses. The representation of the collective, the construction of identity and the role of technique in these phenomena have been recurrent themes in his work, which has often been described as a critique of ideology.
His art confronts conventional narratives of history, archival or ethnographic objects and political and subcultural representations, while observing the technical and material conditions of all of them. Writing is a common resource in his art, always in relation to sculpture.
Mendizabal has had solo exhibitions at such places as Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA, Museo Oteiza, Museo del Alabado in Quito and London’s Raven Row, and has taken part in group exhibitions at Secession in Vienna, Guggenheim Bilbao and the Venice, São Paulo and Taipei biennials, and many other curated exhibitions.
Image © Barbara Fecchio
