The exhibition A Generative Way by Marisa González reviews the artist’s career on the occasion of her receiving the 2023 Velázquez Prize for her extensive career as a multimedia creator.
Marisa González (Bilbao, 1943) is a pioneer in applying new reproduction and communication technologies to artistic creation. Since the 70s her work moved away from conventional artistic means to focus on what was cutting edge technology at the time, i.e. colour photocopies, faxes, and other tools. Her aim was to create generative art as opposed to copying or replicating. To this end, she introduced new and original elements emerging from her interaction with the machine, rather than from its mere operation. Marisa González thus created her own method, a language where immediacy, randomness, trial and error became the protagonists.
Description:
This anthology, curated by historian and researcher Violeta Janeiro Alfageme, covers five decades of the artist’s production and offers a large selection of her major series and projects. It reveals how the artist has turned machines and technology into a medium for critical reflection on the present. Through each technological device, she explores alternative ways of narrating and representing reality, creating images and processes that go beyond the intended uses of the tool.
Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao has collaborated in the production of this project by the Reina Sofía National Museum Art Centre. In this second stage, the exhibition expands to highlight some of the artist´s most emblematic projects in dialogue with the local context. As such, and in addition to the works common to both art centres, the exhibition features Nuclear Lemóniz and La Fábrica – Harino Panadera 1999-2000, two projects that bring together her vision from an industrial perspective and her tireless work as a pioneer of art and technology.
