A long history of diverse connections and gaps, ranging from reciprocal interaction and mutual influences to controversies, runs through the relationship between the visual arts and architecture. Although different in their roles, they share the creation of plural shapes from human experience and dwelling. From the modern avant-garde of the fist decades of the 20th Century until the glocal condition of our days, those loans and disputes have led to a permanent reflection on their own disciplines and relationships. These connections configure what Hal Foster has called the "art-architecture complex".

The celebration of the I International Architecture Biennial in San Sebastian will be a favourable environment to present a review of some of the contemporary challenges affecting architecture and urbanism in different educational, cultural and museum spaces. Furthermore, this event will also foster the presentation of connections with the visual arts. A network of exhibitions in the Altxerri, Kur, Arteko, Ekain, and Vetus Art art galleries will gather artists who dialogue with aspects of these territories between disciplines.

Kur Gallery:

A miscellaneous exhibition that will bring together five artists whose works open up a dialogue on different aspects linked to architecture and urbanism. In the case of Javier Balda, a series of collages plays with the idea of representation and with a memory of diagrammatic shapes. Xabier Laka, from a constructivist approach, he establishes some border tension between the ideas of sculpture and architectural model, for projecting imaginary processes and objects that define a way of inhabiting perception and experience. Carlos Cánovas, through a series of images of peripheral, industrial or urban landscapes he records a sort of critical archive on changing spaces. Xabier Idoate, displays a series of polyptychs made with digital images that come from a collection of architectural and urban typologies and derive into a kind of dystopian storylines or displaced and critical landscapes. Víctor Arrizabalaga, from his sculpture practice he summarises a collection of signs related to the city, architecture and language, stated as object metaphors.

Curator: Fernando Golvano

Organiser: Ancora

Picture: Xabier Idoate