Construction materials of the
exhibition room
2003
Installation view,
FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon
Photo: André Morin
Lara Almarcegui
Construction materials of Frieze Art Fair
‘The project consists of a list of all the construction materials necessary to build the art fair building and its total weight… This list of materials should remind one of the building before it is constructed — when it is loaded onto the lorry ready for delivery, and should be similar to the pile of material it becomes once dismantled. The list is similar to a cookbook which shows the dish alongside the list of its ingredients; here you can see the building and its various component parts—’
Lara Almarcegui, May 2006
Lara Almarcegui’s work often explores neglected or overlooked sites, carefully cataloguing and highlighting each location’s tendency towards entropy. Her projects have ranged from a guide to the wastelands of Amsterdam to the display, in their raw form, of the materials used to construct the galleries in which she shows. Her works are simple actions that belie the vast research process which she undertakes to achieve them.
For Frieze Projects Almarcegui compiled a structural analysis of Frieze Art Fair. A large-scale wall text documented the range and volume of the material components of the tent: steel, wood, plaster, cloth, plastic. The list highlighted the scale of the event as well as its transitory nature, and as such represented an alternative way of drawing attention to, and experiencing, this site of production.
Lara Almarcegui (b. 1972) is a Spanish artist based in Rotterdam. She has had solo exhibitions at FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (2004) and at INDEX, Stockholm (2003). She presented projects at the Liverpool Biennial (2004), in ‘Public Act’, Kunsthalle, Lund, and ‘Project Rotterdam’, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (both 2005) and at the São Paulo Biennial (2006).
