Valencian Institute of Modern Art Opens Exhibition by Ximo Lizana

VALENCIA.- IVAM launched an exhibition that comprises 35 works, pictures and robots dated between 2001 and 2009 made by Ximo Lizana. The images have been included in a catalog together with the texts written by the curator of the exhibition, Ángel Kalenberg, the director of the IVAM, Consuelo Ciscar, María García-Abadillo and Natalia Gómez.

Ximo Lizana studied in the School of Applied Arts of Huesca and the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Valencia. He felt soon interested in the relation between robotics, engineering and art and became part of a global interlinked counterculture based on new technologies potential. His artistic work is inserted in a transitional period between the representation and the simulation of art. Through these conceptions, an increasingly complex world can be represented. The artist creates new conceptual approaches by using new technology tools. He takes advantage of the new formats stemming from digital technology and uses new materials, previously reserved for scientific or technologic purposes, for plastic experimentation.

Within the frame of the new media art his work comprises robotic sculpture and technological installations and pictures combining conventional artistic photography with synthetic image settings (made with 3D technique). According to Xima Lizana “The dynamism of the works, which sometimes goes beyond its physical ubication, as well as its dialog with the surrounding active elements, creates a magic essence, which can be associated to visceral feeling and to the lost chemistry of art.”

Cultural resonances of the ciberpunk myths can be found in the work of Ximo Lizana, as well as the promises and threatens of posthumanism, which stem from the possibility of manipulating the future of the human race by using biotechnology and computer science. Ximo Lizana’s conceptual universe analyses the relation between people and machines from a prothesic point of view as part of an overcrowded and industrial social environment where cyborgs and androgens are part of the daily life. The machine exercises an amplifying function of human nature, as it overcomes the barriers established by the organic constraints. However, Ximo Lizana avoids apocalyptic approaches, thus in some of his pictures, which are filled with eroticism, he emphasizes the importance of the body and not its obsolete character. The employment of elements such as blood (Frágil espejismo, 2006; El fracaso de los sueños, 2008) Medellín III, 2008) or fascist clothing (El deshielo, 2008), refer to the subtle line between pain and pleasure.

Ximo Lizana currently combines his artistic and investigative work and he also works as a teacher in the Technology and Communications Department of the European University of Madrid. He is a former teacher of the University of California and he has participated in several Arco exhibitions. He has been awarded the AECA (Spanish Art Critics Association) prize, among others, and he has recently been part of the last PhotoEspaña edition with the exhibition Coltán. His work is part of renowned public and private collections.