Institute of Contemporary Arts Hosts Pablo Bronstein's Building-Wide Exhibition

Written by Barney Cotswold Sunday, 14 August 2011 22:03

LONDON.- Pablo Bronstein signals a new era in the history of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) with Sketches for Regency Living, a groundbreaking exhibition in which, for the first time, an individual artist is invited to work across the entire ICA building—Nash House on The Mall—introducing major architectural interventions and choreographing extraordinary art and ballet performances from 9 June to 25 September.

Bronstein draws upon London's Regency history and that of the ICA building for Sketches for Regency Living, using a wide range of media to explore his interest in architecture from performance and drawing to installation and sculpture. His work demonstrates an affinity for how architecture and sculpture intervene in personal identity and inform our movements and social mores. Intimate and stylized tours through the building-wide exhibition, inspired by guided visits around country houses and other historic properties, offer insights into the history of Nash House and Bronstein's work.

In this, Bronstein's most ambitious exhibition to date, the work penetrates every area of the ICA—the bar, entrance hall, theatre, galleries, concourse and the Regency Nash & Brandon Rooms overlooking St James's Park. Throughout Sketches for Regency Living existing architecture is embellished with forms that reference the Regency period and incorporate various decorative schemes, while visitors encounter neo-classical structures—a Regency room will be built within the theatre—and daily choreographed performances. Bronstein combines elements of the past with the present, and encourages the ICA to engage with its own identity.


The exhibition includes a retrospective programme of Bronstein's dance works; newly choreographed performances with performers' costumes designed by fashion designer Mary Katrantzou; and an original ballet devised by Bronstein and co-commissioned by the ICA and Tramway, Scotland's leading venue for contemporary visual and performing art with performances at Tramway and the ICA.

Pablo Bronstein's unique intervention at the ICA forms a point of reference and springboard from which a diverse range of programmed and spontaneous events challenge and engage audiences over the course of the exhibition, inviting artists and audiences to experience the ICA in deconstructed and reinterpreted spaces.

Pablo Bronstein (born 1977, Buenos Aires) lives and works in London. He completed his BA in Fine Art at the Slade (2001) and an MA Visual Arts at Goldsmiths College (2004). Solo exhibitions include Garden A La Mode at Tate Britain (2010), Pablo Bronstein at the Met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009), and Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich (2007). Significant group shows include Move at the Hayward Gallery (2010), Manifesta 8, Mucia (2010), PERFORMA 07, New York (2007), and Tate Triennial (2006).

To complement the exhibition Pablo Bronstein has created a hand-coloured etching; Cafetiere in the Piranesi Taste 2011 in a limited edition of 85, plus an edition of 15 prints with special colouring. Visit : http://www.ica.org.uk/

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