Double readings/Identities and fictions
Exhibition produced by the Fundación Municipal de Cultura, Educación y Universidad Popular del Ayuntamiento de Gijón/Xixón from the Circa XX and Nueva Colección Pilar Citoler collections, curated by Semíramis González.
Based on curatorial research by Semíramis González focused on the body, fiction, identity and its many facets, the exhibition Dobles lecturas. Identities and Fictions raises aesthetic and identity issues such as masquerade, costume, theatricality, fiction, double reading and portraiture, through the Circa XX and Nueva Colección Pilar Citoler collections.
The Circa XX and Nueva Colección Pilar Citoler collections are among the most important collections of international contemporary art in Spain. The more than 1,600 works that comprise them reflect the life, sensitivity and personal taste of the woman who made them possible: Pilar Citoler.
From 30 October 2024 to 26 January 2025.
Antiguo Instituto Cultural Centre. Gijón.
Pilar Citoler is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, appointed president in 2007. In 2005 she received the ARCO Award for private collecting in Spain. In 2006 the University of Cordoba also awarded her a prize for her career. In 2007 she was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.
Starting with a selection of pieces from the two collections, the curator and art historian Semíramis González (Gijón/Xixón, 1988) proposes a transversal view of the works, going beyond their conventional reading. The works in this exhibition present other reading possibilities beyond the visual ones; in some the fiction and the mask are evident, in others the artist’s hand in the work reveals his gestures and in others the transformation is more poetic and subtle. In all of them, the body and the possibility of disguising and transmuting personality and identity appear in some way. National and international artists present us with an exhibition as an open book, where the public can read and interpret, beyond what they apparently see.
Among the works selected for the exhibition, which can be seen in Room 2 of the Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, paying special attention to works by women artists, we find, among others, such prominent and established names as Graciela Iturbide, Grete Stern, Concha Jerez, Francis Bacon and Ester Ferrer; young artists such as Marina Vargas, Dalila Gonçalves and Erica Nyholm; and also representation of Asturian artists such as Soledad Córdoba, Avelino Sala, Federico Granell and Sandra Paula Fernández.
