Fran Meana
15 July 2016 – 30 September 2016
Fran Meana holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo (2006), later obtaining a Master’s degree (MFA) at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2012).
He has participated in exhibitions such as System Recovery, Assembly Point, London (2018), Generaciones 2018, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2018), Querer Parecer Noche, CA2M, Móstoles (2018), Cómo vivir con la memoria, MUSAC, León (2017), Del Rigor en la Ciencia, Centro Párraga, Murcia (2017), Tender Buttons, Salón, Madrid, ES (2017), Arqueologías del Futuro, Laboral, Gijón, ES (2016), 1. 000 Caballos de Potencia, Can Trinxet, Hospitalet, ES (2016), Labour, Motion and Machinery, TENT, Rotterdam, NL (2015), Go with the Flow, SixtyEight, Copenhagen, DK (2015), Machines for Hardrock, Avalanche, London, UK (2015), Percussive Hunter, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul, TR (2015), Feel the Discourse, Guest Projects, London, UK (2015) and Pensar Bien y Dibujar Mal, Nogueras Blanchard, Madrid, ES (2014).
His work has been supported by grants and awards such as Generations 2018, Madrid (2018), LABjoven-Los Bragales (2016), Mondriaan Fonds (2013), Stichting Promotieprijs & Piet Zwart Institute (2012), HSP Huygens NUFFIC (2011), and is part of the collections of institutions such as Artium, CGAC and Nomas Foundation, as well as several international private collections.
He also collaborates regularly with the Institute of Imagination and Cypher Coders as a tutor in their educational programs.
Fran Meana works with sculpture, video, text and installation, repositioning industrial remains under new modes of production. Using a combination of analog and digital techniques, her projects respond to specific historical episodes and develop their potential to establish new forms and associations.
His research-driven practice explores narratives that intersect culture, industry and the natural world. To this end, he collaborates with scientists, engineers, computer programmers, microbiology and climate experts to create new multimedia installations that explore the limits of human experience and how we relate to natural and technological forms.
Project in residence
Arqueología del Futuro
Fran Meana develops during his residency at LABoral the project Arqueologías del futuro, which takes as a starting point the work of the Asturian architect Joaquín Vaquero Palacios, author of the design of the hydroelectric power plants of Salime (1954), Selviella (1958-1962) and Proaza (1964-1965), and analyzes the mediating role that industrial technology had and has between nature and society. In the words of the artist “Vaquero Palacios’ reliefs offer a unique opportunity to analyze and rethink the links that different productive models establish between work, technology, nature and society, and to propose alternatives to their organization in our recent history”.
This artistic proposal will be presented as a multimedia installation, an expanded archive that combines replicas of the reliefs designed by Vaquero Palacios, documentary material and a series of videos where a character with a lightning body -created by the company that owns the power plants as an advertising resource- interacts with the spectator, activating the different materials present in the installation.
Arqueologías del futuro is the winning project of the LABjoven_Los Bragales Prize, jointly organized by the Los Bragales Collection, owned by Cantabrian businessman Jaime Sordo, and LABoral Centro de Arte. As part of the prize, the artist will work for two months at LABoral’s Plataforma 0. Centro de Producción, as a preliminary step to the public presentation of the project, which will take place from September 30, 2016 to January 15, 2017.
