Depth of FIeld: Laida Lertxundi

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Although only timidly exhibited in Spanish circuits, Laida Lertxundi (1981, Bilbao), has forged an important international career. Her works, which she records on 16-millimetre films, combine conceptual rigour with sensory pleasure to suggest seductive and self-reflective explorations of the environments in which she works. With this exhibition, the programme begins its support of the production of her work, thanks to which Lertxundi has created the work Day Time which will be projected for the first time during her exhibition in Matadero.

Laida Lertxundi,
who lives in the United States, is an artist and filmmaker whose works reveal the impossibility of capturing the motionlessness of the landscapes of California, an iconic place for the film industry and one of the main sets for Lertxundi’s own oeuvre. Back in the early days of her career, these natural spaces developed into key protagonists of her plots and started accommodate the emotionally intense life she recreates in them. In her works, she explores and deconstructs seemingly contradictory duos such as documentation versus fiction, action versus contemplation, and form versus function, an approach to filmmaking that is both intriguing and engaging. In every shot, emotion overwhelms the form, every sequence of images stems from the sensuality it communicates and the affective connection between what is shown, all presented from the perspective of the subjectivity of a markedly feminist praxis. In short, ‘emotional mappings’ envelop the works in an aura of mystery, sophistication and a profound sense of nostalgia for an era now in the past. This is also the reason why Lertxundi opts in all her films to work with non-professional actors, using friends or people she has just met who are generally not proficient in the language of performing.

About  ‘Depth of Field’
Depth of Field’  is a programme that focuses on the production, screening and study of contemporary audiovisual practice. The aim of ‘Depth of Field’ is to offer an in-depth consideration of the work of audiovisual artists (those who produce their work in video format, those who engage in a dialogue with film and other media, and those whose work takes the form of installations with moving images of a very varied nature). Through the presentation of works by established and up-and-coming creators, this programme is intended to help to generate an ongoing space for dialogue in which the artists’ pieces complement each other and contribute to a better understanding of this medium. Following the first season of the ‘Depth of Field’ programme given over to violence, as addressed in the work of Meiro Koizumi and Mar.a Ruido, and a second season focusing on ethnography, with an exhibition of the work of Carlos Casas and Ana Vaz, this third season considers the ability of music to alter visual experience by examining the artistic practice of Laida Lertxundi (25 October – 15 December) and Manon de Boer (18 December – 16 February 2020), two artists who combine conceptual rigour with sensory pleasure in their works.

Venue: 

Matadero Madrid - Madrid, Spain

Dates: 

Friday, October 25, 2019 (All day) to Sunday, December 15, 2019 (All day)

Category: 

Dates: 

Friday, October 25, 2019 (All day) to Sunday, December 15, 2019 (All day)

Venue: 

  • Plaza de Legazpi, 8
    28045   Madrid
    Spain
    40° 23' 29.6952" N, 3° 41' 46.896" W