CARMEN CALVO. Premi Julio González 2022

On the occasion of the Julio González Award being granted to Carmen Calvo (Valencia, 1950), IVAM has organized an exhibition which reviews the principal lines of this artist’s research from the late 1960s to the present time. To a large extent, one of Carmen Calvo’s works supports the recovery and re-creation of images and of discarded objects. In her complex creative process, the artist constructs her personal view of the world activating mechanisms such as daydreams, memories, desires and fears.

The tour of this exhibition begins with a selection of works, created during the 1980s, belonging to her emblematic series Escrituras, Recopilación y Reconstrucción (Writing, Compilation and Reconstruction). This is a series of works in plaster of Paris and clay which are assembled in a patient exercise of archaeological compilation and classification, works that evoke recovered vestiges of ancient writings.

In this exhibition, the central nave of Gallery 1 presents a re-creation of the artist’s studio, a jumbled scenario in which the artworks cohabit with shelves, dolls, magazines and fragments of diverse objects and mannequins; images and references that, like a cabinet of curiosities, becomes the real cornerstone of her work.

A notable place within this exhibition is occupied by Carmen Calvo’s critical look at women’s oppression and inequality. A reflection that the artist has intensified during the past decade through the use of photographic images that she has rescued and taken part in and that show us, in a very direct manner, silenced women, mistreated in their everyday work, festivities and families. Hidden and oppressed faces under cloths, rags, ropes and the enigmatic remains of toys.