Overview

This is the catalogue that accompanies a solo exhibition of the work of Domenec, an artist born in 1962 in Mataro, a town in Catalonia. The exhibition sets out to contemplate, through the artist`s work, how neoliberalism destroys social projects with its escalation of individualism. In doing so it offers a retrospective of Domenec`s work from the late 1990s to the present, and includes some new projects. Using certain emblematic buildings or monuments as referents, Domenec analyses the proposals of the modern movement and its legacy within contemporary practice. Supporting his research are projects in situ, installations, maquettes, photographs, workshops, seminars and videos. Based on various local contexts, his work establishes a dialogue with other international themes to highlight the impact on the present of the utopian ideas that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, and are seen as a stand against capitalism. The rise of an urban proletariat in the C19 led to discourses and social models based on social justice and egalitarianism. Utopian communism and socialism developed architectonic models promoting a concept of coexistence in the urban space based on services to the community and better living conditions. Domenec investigates these exemplary systems and the breakdown of what he calls the ` fragile contract between capital and the social body` . The transformations of the socio-political circumstances generated by these systems can also lead, at times, to changes of usage and the creation of dystopic models. Social housing turned into military barracks or internment camps; statues of circumstantial heroes that were pulled down because of their meaning, or counter meaning; or the absurdity of a ghost city used for military training in urban warfare, but never officially recognized, are some of the cases used by Domenec to investigate the dysfunctions of the processes of modernity and the political accounts marginalised by these narratives. In other words, the breakdown of a social project that has become, as a result of neoliberalism, the exacerbation of individualism. Domenec`s work gives voice to the protagonists of that story, to unofficial discourses, and avoids the dominant narratives to bring back memory

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Domenec is a socially-minded artist who has been showing his work in Spain and abroad since 1989. He is committed to an avant-garde and multi-disciplinary practice, and often offers a penetrating and critical approach to the effects of architecture on community life. He functions as a critic and innovator for whole communities, an installation artist whose domain is not just the gallery, but such unusual spaces as the window of a hairdresser's shop, a hospital, a factory about to be demolished or the interior of someone's home.

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