Ana Laura Aláez. I Am a Palace / I Am a Stable

“I Am a Palace / I Am a Stable” is the title of the exhibition by Ana Laura Aláez that will be on view in Es Baluard Museu’s Exhibition Hall B from April 2024.

Conceived as a project made up of entirely new work that engages with the structural characteristics of the empty exhibition space by means of a reticulated sculptural piece, without beginning or end, and full of references to a mode of thinking that constantly navigates between the atavistic and ancestral, the telluric and the epidermal, this exhibition is a reflection of the influence the island exerts on the artist’s life since she settled in Mallorca thirteen years ago.

Beyond revealing the winding of an artistic path that is written in the ink of its doubts and certainties, “I Am a Palace / I Am a Stable” aspires to make visible the internal heartbeat of a body of work that, weaving itself between warps and wefts, feeds on silences and howls, maintains its balance between horizontal and vertical planes, modulates itself in the form of a net, and is susceptible to being penetrated to the point of disappearing before the spectator’s eyes.

Ana Laura Aláez (Bilbao, 1964) is a multidisciplinary artist. In her early works, she revisits questions posed by artists of a previous generation, particularly these associated with the New Basque Sculpture. Today, she is interested in incorporating elements that address gender perspectives, as well as utilizing materials and procedural strategies that diverge from the more orthodox sculptural tradition. Aláez views all her work, especially her three-dimensional work, as if they were part of an epistolary dialogue with other influential artists.

Among her solo exhibitions, those held at CA2M (2019); Azkuna Zentroa (2021); Towada Art Center, Towada City, Japan, (2008); MUSAC, León; Museo Banco de la República de Bogotá (2006); Centro Cultural de España, Mexico (2004); Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki (2004); Spanish Pavilion at the 49. ª Biennale di Venezia (2001); MNCARS, Madrid (2000).

She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at Oku-Noto Triennale, Suzu, Japan (2023); Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao (2007); The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2005); Podewil Center of Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2004); PS1, MOMA, New York (2003).