Tag: Ignacio Pérez Pérez

FADO is pleased to welcome Marita Bullman (Germany) and Ignacio Pérez Pérez (Venezuela/Finland) to the International Visiting Artists series, along with Liina Kuittinen (Finland). This series seeks to bring exceptional artists from the global performance art scene to Toronto, to present a new work and give an artist talk about their own practices and the contemporary performance art ecologies of their home cities/countries.

In addition to presenting new solo performance works, both Marita Bullmann and Ignacio Pérez Pérez will engage audiences in talks about their individual practices.

Marita Bullman and Ignacio Pérez Pérez’s appearance in Toronto is in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO’s enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times [Tomasz Szrama (Poland) and Macarena Perich Rosas (Chilé), 2013; Victoria Gray (UK) and Dorothea Rust (Switzerland), 2015] over the years to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and Montréal.

© Marita Bullman, untitled (another small matter), 2017. Photo by Rebekah Dahlia.

© Ignacio Pérez Pérez, Untitled, Spain, 2017. Photo Ana Matey.

Venezuela
www.instagram.com/ignacioperezperez/

Ignacio Pérez Pérez is a performance artist, photographer and occasional writer. He has been making performances since 2002, and his work has been presented in the streets and museums, in festivals and as solo exhibition in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Uruguay and Venezuela. Currently, he lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

Marita Bullmann, Liina Kuittinen and Ignacio Pérez Pérez’s appearances in Toronto are in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO’s enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times over the years [Tomasz Szrama (Poland) and Macarena Perich Rosas (Chilé), 2013; Victoria Gray (UK) and Dorothea Rust (Switzerland), 2015] to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and Montreal.

Marita Bullmann’s (Germany) works are engagements with everyday objects: familiar materials, actions, spaces and places. In her performances, she seeks a direct encounter between body and space. Her working method can be understood as a temporally ephemeral, site- and situation-specific process. With her actions she creates her own realities and scenarios, which strengthen the awareness for object, material, body and space. Visual, temporal, haptic or acoustic elements determine the effect and perception of her performance. The way she creates abstract interpretations allows us to perceive and observe the things around us in a new way. The interpretation takes place through experience. The objects and materials she uses are by no means neutral, but connect with our sensual and emotional world of experience. Bullmann’s intention is to influence the usual mechanisms of seeing and perceiving far away from cultural imprints and to create a new ‘space’ that lets us become aware of the act of seeing. She combines the constructed experiences with a search for images and actions that make the phenomena of curiosity and peculiarity visible.

Liina Kuittinen (Finland): I am on my four. I am next to the ground. I see the surface from very close distance, the small particles and the space between them. I have to move my whole body closer to the object if I want to see it more clearly. I can not take the object in my hand and bring it closer to my eye. As an artist I am on my four and my hands are not swinging freely. I am eating ice-cream while writing this text. I am eating ice-cream for real, not just writing about it. I am eating it and it gives me great pleasure. Ice-cream goes through my digestion and my body knows how to turn the sugar into energy and to use the proteins and to get rid of the leftovers. Digestion is process that involves the body with other processes, one point in the circle of matter. Performance operates on the same plain with digestion. Performance and process of digesting are equally real. They are meeting points for material flows, actual events transforming material into other.

Ignacio Pérez Pérez (Venezuela / Finland) is a visual nomad. His work explores phenomenal reality as a journey, like the poet Mosche Benarrosch wrote: “the longest journey / is arriving / at the place / where you are.” He creates experiences of ritualistic playfulness and worldly contemplation to observe and encounter otherness and its permanent state of transformation in the realm of everyday life. His practice crosses diverse fields as performance art, walking, street photography and networking. “We are together in this. Now or never. Now or never. Now or never.”

Initiated by Patrick Lacasse and Alexis Bellavance, VIVA! Art Action was founded in 2006 by six artist-run centres from Greater Montreal to support the production of events dedicated to the presentation and advancement of action art practices and knowledge. The organization’s energies are primarily focused on VIVA! Art Action, an international biennial whose sixth edition took place in October 2017. Currently the fruit of a partnership with nine artist-centred organizations, the festival provides the public with an accessible and convivial context in which to encounter performance art in its most striking and avant-garde forms.

© Marita Bullmann, 2019. Photo Henry Chan.

Presented in the context of Escapist Action: Performance in Recession

Barter is a relational practice, and is as old as the wheel. In a pairing of related performance works, Open Barter Market and The Artist and the Beanstalk, Núñez & Pérez create an alternative exchange and cultural economy, one based not on capitalist value, but on need value. Barter as an opportunity for performance. Performance as an opportunity for escape.

The artists arrived to Toronto carrying with them 72 objects from their home country. Objects ranging from the absurd to the personal, trinkets, objects with stories. On November 23, they opened the doors of the gallery with a performance called Open Barter Market. The public was invited to bring an object of their own to trade and barter for one of the objects the artists brought. Or instead of an object, you could trade an hour of your time in which the artists would do an action for you, within reason, at a location of your choosing. After a day of bartering and exchanging objects and stories about the objects, the artists had 72 new objects. Some absurd, some personal, trinkets, objects with stories.

The very next day the gallery transforms from a market place into a performance space. Using the newly exchanged items as materials in an ever-changing and exchanging series of one-hour performances, the artists begin the next phase of their project entitled, The Artist and the Beanstalk. For 6 days, 12 hours a day, Higuerey Núñez and Pérez Pérez take turns choosing one of their new 72 objects and create a live performance using that object. All of the objects stayed in the gallery space, and often (but not always) become a jumping off point or a part of the next performance. You are encouraged to trade an hour of your time during the 6-days of The Artist and the Beanstalk to come and witness the performance being made with your item.

Open Barter Market
November 23, 2009 @ 2:00pm–9:00pm

The Artist and the Beanstalk
November 24–29, 2009 @ 9:00am–9:00pm