MARC BIJL, at Domus Artium 2

Marc Bijl. Burning Bluetooth, 2006. Burned wooden construction, video and wooden remains, Courtesy Cosmic Gallery.

MARC BIJL - Arrested Development. Works 2000 - 2009

Domus Artium 02 - Salamanca, Spain

May 15 - September 19, 2009

Curated by Javier Panera and Paco Barragán

The first solo exhibition in Spain of Marc Bijl (Leerdam, The Netherlands, 1973) will be presented at DA2 Museum with a selection of his most significant works during the last ten years.

Marc Bijl’s artistic production includes objects, installations and interventions in public spaces, in which the use of resources from advertising and underground subcultures is evident. The artist, who lives and works in Rotterdam and Berlin, attacks the superficiality that sometimes typifies mass-media culture and pop legends, creating a personal iconography with elements taken from the recent history of art and from contra-cultural movements such as punk, gothic rock and anarchism.

Javier Panera, curator of the show, has stated in his text “Ready to crash and burn” Thoughts on the work of Marc Bijl: “In fact, Marc Bijl carries out a kind of ‘guerrilla warfare’ with icons, signs and language, revealing the close ties that exist between different forms of violence and multinational brand names or the mass media. His work unmasks symbols and myths of popular culture and shows us its reactionary implications, until there is not one single element that attracts us in his work that does not contain an underlying threat, a thread of black humour or a cynically subversive quality which forces the viewer to position himself morally and aesthetically. In this sense, we are looking at real conceptual art based on our perception of the structures (of power) and the myths of popular culture.” In: Marc Bijl. NAI PUBLISHERS/DA2. Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura, 2009.

The exhibition will be accompanied with a retrospective catalogue, which includes text by Tom Morton, Rein Wolfs, Javier Panera and an interview with the artist by Paco Barragán.