Karlos Gil wins the DKV Seguros-Álvarez Margaride award with his project "The Moon Museum"
The work will be produced in Plataforma 0, LABoral’s Production Centre, and will be on exhibit from 22nd June at the Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial de Gijón
The work documents the design made by six North American artists for the project The Moon Museum. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
"The Moon Museum", by artist Karlos Gil (Toledo, 1984), has been selected as the winning project of the DKV Seguros – Álvarez Margaride Production Grant, jointly called by the insurance company and LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón.
Karlos Gil will develop his project during an artist residency of up to two months in Plataforma 0, Centre of Production at LABoral, in preparation for its presentation to the public from 22 June until 22 September of this year.
"The Moon Museum" was an alleged secret project carried out by NASA in 1969 which consisted of placing on the surface of the moon six artworks made expressly for the project by various North American artists from the 1960s. These were John Chamberlain, Forrest Myers, David Novros, Claes Oldemburg, Robert Rauschemberg and Andy Warhol.
Without being able to check if it was put into practice, Karlos Gil rescued what might have been the first 'Space Art' work in history and captured it in an installation which can be visited from June at LABoral.
"The Moon Museum" presents a narrative construction through overlapping stories, photographs and souvenirs that, combined with the audiovisual and technological material, will show this secret moon museum, based on a traditional science-fiction story, creating a museum within another one: in LABoral.
Karlos Gil studied at the School of Visuals Arts in New York and at the Facultad de Bellas Artes [Fine Arts Academy] in Madrid and Lisbon. Since 2008 he has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in numerous galleries and art centres in Spain and abroad. At LABoral he took part in the exhibition "Estación experimental" [Experimental Station], coproduced with CA2M, Madrid in 2011.
His work is present in the collections of CCCB, Barcelona; Matadero, Madrid; C arte C, Madrid; the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid City Council.
The jury that has selected the proposal out of the 73 taking part in the call was presided by Josep Santacreu, Managing Director of DKV Seguros, and formed by Iñaki Martínez Antelo, Director of MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea, Vigo and Manuela Villa, head of Contents Department at Matadero, Madrid, as external jurors; Juan Bautista Peiró, University Professor at the Facultad de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia, and Alicia Ventura, Management Director of Arte Ventura and Consultant and Curator of Art Projects at DKV Seguros, as the members appointed by DKV Seguros; and Benjamin Weil, LABoral’s Activities Director; and Rocío Gracia Ipiña, Head of Exhibitions, as members designated by the Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón.
The DKV Seguros – Álvarez Margaride Production Grant is the result of a five-year collaboration agreement between LABoral and DKV Seguros, with both organisations undertaking to organise, produce and exhibit the selected work. This call for proposals pays homage to the businessman José Luis Álvarez Margaride, a native of Gijón and president of DKV Seguros until his death in 2010, for his commitment to business in Asturias and his interest in art, culture and scientific research.
On the basis of the rules, the call aims to select a work which uses new technologies in its broadest vision, conceived by an artist who is either Spanish or a legal resident in Spain, born in 1971 or after. It is provided with €10.000 gross -€2.000 for fees and a production fund of €8.000 – as well as access to all of LABoral’s technical and human resources. The completed work will be shown at the Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón from 22 June until 22 September this year.
LABoral’s programme for this year 2013 has been underpinned by strengthening the research and production of new work through artist residencies and work groups. The Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Gijón) invites artists and developers to utilise the space and technical resources available to them, in many cases, through public calls as on this occasion. New works will emerge from this which will subsequently be shown in the different exhibition rooms at LABoral as a precursor to their travelling to other national and international venues. In other cases, the outcome from the residencies will lead to workshops and presentations in which the creators present the results from their research to various audiences.
DKV Seguros, the insurance company specialising in health, has created ARTERIA DKV, a programme dedicated to fostering different activities that encourage artistic creation which are always closely linked to health and improving people’s quality of life. In this way, true to its artistic commitment, DKV aims to stimulate innovation and creativity in general between the insurance and healthcare sector, and additionally, promote it as a value in society.
The DKV Seguros Group is part of Munich Health, the division which has brought together the specialist healthcare companies of Munich Re since 2006. The insurance group Munich Re combines its global knowledge in insurance and reinsurance, including services, in the field of healthcare. In Spain, the DKV Group has a nationwide presence with an extensive network of offices and clinics in which almost 2,000 employees work, providing a service to nearly 2 million customers.
Its vocation is to offer its policy-holders a quality management strategy, characterised by an attitude of permanent innovation in products and services and by its expertise in healthcare and personal insurance.
