EXHIBITION TEXT
RAIMON SIBILO (THE NETHERLANDS) – GRACIAS POR SU VISITA
Berlin-based artist (since 2011). Born and raised in The Netherlands. Graduated in 2004 from a study Commercial, Graphic Design at SintLucas, Boxtel (NL) with a MBO degree in Multimedia and in 2009 from The Art Academy St. Joost, ‘s-Hertogenbosch (NL) with a BA in Fine Art. In the following years, he immersed himself in different projects, exhibitions, cooperations. The biggest of these projects were a self-made boat for a Art boat parade inspired by El Bosco, a social community art project with the residents of a poor district in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a interdisciplinary project with 15 others in the woods of the Ardennes (BE) and a 2 months lasting project with four other artists,working and creating in a basement, a space contrary of a “white cube”, dirty, grey and wet. Raimon Sibilo was the initiator and creator of this project which was afterwards turned into an exhibition during Art Night ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
“A beachcomber in a concrete digital landscape”
Collecting images, ideas, inspiration, tangible things, then categorizing them, re-using them, adapting them, changing the medium, creating series. These are a few steps his work goes through. Irony, sarcasm, (self-invented) symbolism and humor are often used to show/discuss in a playful way, important/serious subjects.
In the project GRACIAS POR SU VISITA the artist approaches the city from the point of view of a tourist. Discovering a new city in a strange country where you don’t speak the language. Walking, biking, public transport, going trough the city, driving around in a Tourbus, moving from one museum to the other, visiting castles, a temple, monuments, churches, parks, etc.
“Setting out in the morning, jumping on my bike, following the river trough the park, after the park continuing the river. Taking a left somewhere, suddenly I’m not biking on asphalt anymore but on sand and stones with a lot of holes. Slowly the landscape changes from stone houses to wooden houses, to self-made cardboard houses. I seem to have arrived in some sort of slum district. Atmosphere is changing, kids asking me for money, people looking at me from the shadows (35 degrees outside), I stopped making pictures with my iPhone 5s. After more than an hour, I manage to get away from this place, over a mountain, trough a fence. I arrived in a completely new build district with huge fats, big asphalted streets, benches every 10 meters, completely empty, not a soul on the streets.”
Raimon Sibilo constantly switches back and forth between the roll of the “tourist” and the observer, the urban explorer, the critical minded artist. Hereby it happens that he leaves the typical tourist locations, the “yellow brick road”, traveling around, going somewhere random, trusting Google Maps blindly for directions and coordinates, ending up at places a tourist would never go. Experiences can be transformed into work or used as inspiration. This way of observing the city follows the same principle as for example one of his ongoing project “Urban Nature”, where he collects a series of photos of the re-enactment of nature in the urban landscape.
“Gracias por su visita” Used napkins in a frame with a label underneath which explains what the typical Spanish dish was and where and when it was eaten.
Video (19:37) “Walking in Madrid with 25 kilos of Patatas Especial Freir”
Postcards of Madrid
Digital Video Photoalbum (12:54) of “my vacation” in Madrid: “Nothing Else Matters”
Quick view in the Photoalbum (Zine) of “my vacation” in Madrid. In the nearby future to be seen in Berlin, together with the other works and a response on them.
2 books and a still of video on background. I made a second book in cooperation with Alessandro Marchi called “walking from Buenos Aires to Colombia”. This project will be continued in the future, so more about this later.
Raimon Sibilo 1.0 