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ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION
NEWSLETTER July-August, 2013 1
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NEWSLETTER #26 Contents
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14 Director Al Orensanz Graphic Design Yuliya Novosad Articles Derek Bently
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Angel Orensanz Dances With The Bulls & The Crowds At The Sanfermines...............4 Angel Orensanz arrives to Aldeaduero building an Art Paradise..............................8 Saint Petersburg Academy Of The Arts Receives Angel Orensanz........................12 Angel Orensanz Enters Tahir.....................................................................................16 3
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ANGEL ORENSANZ DANCES WITH THE BULLS AND THE CROWDS AT THE SANFERMINES By Derek Bently
For several hundred years, the city of Pamplona in Northern Spain has maintained a unique ritual of fear and ecstasy. That is the way it celebrates its world famous seven days San Fermin Festival. Ernst Hemingway wrote extensively and made this festival world famous. Hemingway said that he had seen fifteen hundred bulls killed on the field of honor and he acknowledged his indebtedness to some 2,077 books and pamphlets in Spanish dealing with or touching on tauromania. Now, Angel Orensanz, the New York established sculptor, has come out with a series of large scale drawings of dramatic and forceful content about this centuries old Spanish tradition. They cover the walls of his Foundation in Downtown Manhattan. They make up an exhibition of twelve pieces that cover the walls of the gallery in Lower Manhattan that will be available to New York residents and tourists for the next three weeks. The various compositions of this body of work show a deep and engaging vision of this centuries old Spanish Festival stressing the density and proximity of life and death, ecstasy and tragedy that this festival embodies like very few others around the world. While the show goes on in Lower Manhattan, the TV monitors throughout the world carry live images and video of the actual corridas or festivals thousands of miles away in Pamplona, Spain. Angel Orensanz does not use in this exhibition a photographic approach but a much more emotional and dramatic language based in landscapes of running bulls, crowds, skulls, horns, frenzy, passion, fear and spasm. 5
Special Preview:
1986 to the Present: The Orensanz Years On one evening in February 1986, Angel Orensanz, having recently arrived from Atlanta, Georgia, took a stroll around the Lower East Side looking for a building where he could establish his studio. He walked from Delancey street, past the corner of Rivington and Norfolk streets, and up to Houston, finally stumbling upon the former Anshe Slonim synagogue on Norfolk Street. Grim, silent and abused, the building seemed to look grounded and frightened. Thomas McEvilley, an accomplished art critic and scholar, imagined the building sitting “like an ancient spirit with folded wings.” Orensanz moved up the steps and peeped through a crack in the cinderblocks covering the entrances. The sun was setting, casting a ray of light over the ark and the eastern wall of the temple. Support beams from the balconies were leaning into the main space, and the entire area was strewn with debris, broken glass, and decaying books. Orensanz still saw something wonderful in the space, and later set about locating the owner, a developer with numerous holdings in the neighborhood, who eventually sold him the building. Angel Orensanz had arrived in New York after doing sculpture projects in Atlanta, Boca Raton, Los Angeles, and other parts of the country. However, it wasn’t until after his return to Europe that he discovered the Lower East Side and was charmed by its European colors and flavor. Soon after purchasing the property on Norfolk street, he unsealed its doors and windows. He then had proper doors and windows installed to protect the space from pigeons and the wind and snow. Next he secured the floors and brought in electric light for the first time in years.
Coming Out Now! 7
Angel Orensanz arrives to Aldeaduero building an Art Paradise By Derek Bently
An Art Paradise in Aldeaduero
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Building an Art Paradise;The territories of Aldeaduero (Salamanca, Spain) have remained away from the view of the European Continent for thousands of years; and from its industrial development for hundreds of years. Those valleys and mountain ranges have been distant and silent for a very long time. But just now, a group of clairvoyant, local entrepreneurs, in those territories of Salamanca are bringing Aldeaduero to the forefront of the world. Sculptor Angel Orensanz has worked in water front projects at the waterfalls of Sagadaira (Japan); in large urban parks like Holland Park (London), and the regional train station of Sarria in Barcelona. He built even a sculpture concept very similar to the one of Aldeaduero at the very entrance of his Foundation in New York, in Downtown Manhattan; where a small wood of steel tree trunks welcomes you to his building on Norfolk St. Sculptor Angel Orensanz, to whom the mountains have been dedicated was recently invited by cultural leaders of these lands in Western Spain. He is helping them in their plans to craft a vision of an art paradise that maintains hundreds of years of tenancy of these lands and is now opening itself to a conscientious postindustrial population. Angel Orensanz is already at work designing concepts and elements that blend with the skin of the mountains, valleys and riverbanks around Aldeaduero. They serve as land marks in the crests and woodlands. He is building invitational sentries and pathways that excite the old and new visitors. The project is a flexible concept of cooperating and listening, stimulating and provoking new possibilities. His goal is to erect a few structures and ensembles out of observation and connivance, not out of a master plan or an ideology. Angel Orensanz has always been carrying his own internal dialogue with his birth territory in the Spanish Pyrenees, in the border with France.
The main goal is to enrich these lands with three sculpture concepts that Angel Orensanz develops with the support of a group of community leaders and turn it into an Art Paradise. One of his three concepts is a large group of vertical cylinders in concrete. They are no less than 27 units. They are located in several mountains tops and valleys. Angel Orensanz has developed as well a large star in wood with a radius of twelve meters long arms. The third element is a large ship that will not be displayed on the waters of the river Duero but will be accessible on the mountain top of a very high peak.
An Art Paradise in Aldeaduero
In a way, there is a similarity with the Park Guell by Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona. Angel Orensanz lived for many years next to Park Guell and other buildings by Gaudi in Barcelona; but the syntax in Aldeaduero is very different. The totality of the open, wild forests, rivers and rock formations are an essential element of the park. The sculptures stress the in-built harmony of these lands. It definitely moves away from the model of the European urban Park, say Hyde Park, or the American model of Central Park. 9
Cylinders at Aldeaduero – Work by Sculptor Angel Orensanz
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SAINT PETERSBURG ACADEMY OF THE ARTS RECEIVES ANGEL ORENSANZ By Derek Bently
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Saint Petersburg Academy of the Arts Kuindji Exhibitions Hall Angel Orensanz (USA-Spain), Member of the Russian Academy of Arts 15
Exhibit opening. August 1, 3-5 PM Angel Orensanz is back at the Saint Petersburg Academy of the Arts and has been known for his ambitious landscape and urban installations done in Japan, Russia, USA, Western Europe and other countries. This exhibit in St. Petersburg is very innovative in his intensive creativity. For the very first time the artist will present his photographs. Why in Saint Petersburg Academy of the Arts? As Angel Orensanz proudly recognizes his artistic development has been greatly influenced by the giants of Russian Avant-garde as Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and others. All of them lived in Saint Petersburg. On December 6, 2008 the Grand Jury of International Film Festival of Monaco awarded Angel Orensanz the Award for Surrealistic and Non Violent Art for his film “The Final Score” (Angel Orensanz interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s legendary film “The Seventh Seal”). This project was carried with script, direction and photography by Angel Orensanz and with the technical support of the staff from the Museum of Modern Art of Wales. It was July 30 of 2007, when Angel Orensanz finished the film shooting of his film. That very day Ingmar Bergman passed away. By Tatiana Borodina, Director of the Repin Museum, Russia. In my opinion Angel Orensanz is an artist extraordinaire of postmodern thinking.Creativity – inspiration, time, place, and material depend on the circumstances and the mental attitude of the artist. His permanent state of his personality, the creative vision of the world feels like the world is a constantly changing installation, with installation ideas, discoveries, materials and spiritual creation. His mission and the meaning of his existence as an artist, consists in the creation of dramatic art objects, installations, sculptures, paintings and drawings. And in this desire to assert himself as an artist lies the emotional intensity, “nerve” of his works. The creations of Angel Orensanz come always accompanied with such suitable terms as enchantment, expression, inner tension and dynamism. By and large these works remind us of the inseparable connection of outer space and human spirit, communication manifested, visible, intended to exist for a long time and the uniqueness of the moment of creation. They appear as already created, but temporary…. As a master, with a professional training at the school (Ecole de Beaux-Art, Paris), he keeps in his work of many traditions, including the lessons of Russian avantgarde; and the passion and the expression of this artist’s intense personality are perfectly visible. Orensanz who is presenting his work at the Saint 16
Petersburg Academy of the Arts, likes to work in a large space, and especially in open landscapes, be on the streets or in the open mountains and seashores. He is a very generous artist and has a powerful and a creative temperament. He is a most innovative creator, literally obsessed with art. He is ready to share with all the result of his enthusiastic passion for creation, the magic of his creation. He loves to decorate nature, and makes it an organized space for the arts. Art in the natural world and in total co-existence is one of the main themes of creativity Orensanz. It’s simple, but conceptually multifaceted. Comparison and interaction of two realities: the art object and landscape protection, their harmony and contrast, the ability of change in the natural forms of the elements – create a new art-reality; and how often expressive, whole and beautiful it is. In
his designs, even the most destructive, there is a highly complex symbolic imagery. Another subject must see, and everyone will see it has his own way, from his point of view. Materials of his works are: snow, flowers, light fabric, paper‌. They are doomed to a short existence. Therefore, the artist captures the creation of the video and photos where they are stored in time – having this way a long life. The graphic works of Orensanz, are perceived as a stream of reflections of the artist. This exhibition extends until August 31st, 2013. There is catalogue that accompanies this exhibition, with an essay by Tatiana Borodina. 17
Angel Orensanz Museum welcome you to come and visit our spectacular
sculpture exhibitions
ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION
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172 Norfolk Street, New York NY 10002
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T 212 529 7194
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www.orensanz.org
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ANGEL ORENSANZ ENTERS TAHIR By Derek Bently
Under the escort of two gigantic eagles and on the horseback of an imaginary horse sculptor Angel Orensanz has entered Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. This is an imaginary cavalcade but extremely intense and powerful. Spanish sculptor Angel Orensanz tries to join and be part a series of cavalcades of social and political transformation that sweep the Arab world. Preceded by two gigantic eagles and on the back of an intrepid horse , Angel Orensanz has entered Tahrir Square in Cairo. This is a conceptual entrance, but it is visually powerful and impressive. Spanish sculptor Angel Orensanz tries to join and be part a series of waves of popular demand of social transformation in the Arab world. Orensanz is crafting this movement in drawings and photographs that are covering several walls of his Museum in Lower Manhattan, where is located his US Foundation. For months these art works will present there a new vision of the Aran society. The Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York is working on an exhibition this Fall that will accompanied by a catalogue in English, Spanish and Arabic.
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Museum. Events. Art Gallery. 172 Norfolk Street, New York NY 10002 Tel. (212) 529-7194 www.orensanz.org 24
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A N G E L O R E N S A N Z F O U N D A T I O N , Inc Š
172 Norfolk Street, New York NY 10002
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T 212 529 7194
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www.orensanz.org