Vascular

230 x 215 mm
172 pages
Design: Maite Zabaleta

A continuous investigation with materials has accompanied June Crespo’s practice to this day and forms the foundation of Vascular, her exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which this book catalogs while also presenting its own unfolding of content. Among the highlights is the "Vascular Diary," an unpublished document that details Crespo’s methodology and the personal and artistic journey of the last two years during which she conceived and produced the exhibition. The artist's writing is accompanied by a poetic cycle by Miren Agur Meabe, winner of the 2021 National Poetry Award, and critical essays by Jara Rocha and Manuel Cirauqui, the exhibition’s curator.

(...) "I think about the soft quality of metal. Lead sheets, tin, wire. Steel withstands the melting temperature of bronze, and one metal embraces the other. Aluminum melts at a lower temperature, creating hybrid zones where both metals fuse. What I like about casting is that it can transfer the softness of wax and any other material through the mold. Even if it has edges that can cut."

These texts are accompanied by images of Crespo's works, making the book not only a document that illustrates the results but also one that delves into the artist’s working process. It questions a closed concept of formalization, existing in a state of latency and potentiality. The book, an extension of the exhibition landscape, deepens the exploration of Crespo's sculptural and iconographic editing process. Conduits, channels, echoes of vegetal elements, and continuous references to human scale form a metabolic system—a post-industrial garden where textiles, both in materiality and as images and representations, subvert their common use to become structural elements, supporting the form like the skin that holds a bust.

(...) "They’ve added chicken wire to reinforce the already dewaxed mold. Climbing a ladder, I focus on the mold’s openings with the rebar entering. I look as deep as I can. Light enters slightly in a lower section. The thinnest plaster walls translate the negative space that was previously between the bodies. They have organic edges. It reminds me of an internal view of a mold I made years ago. On that occasion, the empty space between the legs and hips of a mannequin looked like an architectural space."

June Crespo (Pamplona, 1982) lives and works in Bilbao. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country (2005) and participated in the De Ateliers residency program (Amsterdam) from 2015 to 2017. Her solo exhibitions include Vieron su casa hacerse campo (2023), at the Ca2M Museum, Madrid; Acts of Pulse (2022) at the P420 Gallery, Bologna; entre alguien y algo (2022) at Carreras Mugica Gallery, Bilbao; Am I an Object (2021) at PA///KT, Amsterdam; Helmets (2020) at Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Voy, sí (2020) at Ehrhard Florez Gallery, Madrid; and No Osso (2019) at Uma Certa Falta de Coêrencia, Porto. She has recently participated in group exhibitions such as The Milk of Dreams, Venice Biennale 2022; Fata Morgana, Jeu de Paume, Paris; and El sentido de la Escultura at the Fundación Miró, Barcelona.