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Four Walls

19/11 2011 – 23/12 2011


Mendes Wood is delighted to announce Four Walls, a solo exhibition of new works by Catalonian artist Daniel Steegmann. The exhibition features four pieces that explore the semiotic structure of the projection – lacking the narrative of a picture, the projections hover between drawings, abstract structural cinema and sculpture.

The projected image no longer intends to be a fictitious depth on the surface of the wall, but rather expands its specific plastic and meaningful properties, joining minimalist propositions of 1970's sculpture.

 Four Walls draws on diverse sources ranging from traditions in literature, poetry, architecture, semiotics, popular mass-media entertainment and critical theory.

Inspired by Structuralist filmmakers, Steegmann has created these works to go against the current wave of narrative conventions in cinema and photography, achieving delicate ends with minimal means. The effect is oddly entrancing, deeply poetic, and representative of a sort of corporeal and sensuous reflection on the medium of film itself and the politics of the audience.

Steegmann’s work spans various media and oscillates between subtle, poetic and nevertheless raw experimentations.

Although mainly conceptually informed, Steegmann's work displays a strong concern for the existence and features of concrete objects: he activates the abstract language as a thought-generating principle and employs the idea of unstable meaning and dematerialized constructions as a way to address issues concerning “objectness”.

The works articulate a sense of space and time, elaborating on the filmic structure – one defined by the action of those very elements. The subject's relation to the formation of meaning until the seperation of related elements.

Daniel Steegmann was born in Barcelona (1977) and has been based in Brazil since 2004. Daniel Steegmann Mangrané was born in Barcelona in 1977 and has lived since 2004 in Brazil, both in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Daniel has recently exhibited at Halfhouse, Barcelona (2010), Centro Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janeiro (2010), Fundació la Caixa, Barcelona (2008) and A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2007) and group shows at Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló, (2011), Galeria Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona (2011), Galerie im Riegerungsviertel / Forgotten Bar Project, Berlin (2010), Galerie KoraAlberg, Antwerpen (2010), Entes, Barcelona (2009), After-the-Butcher, Berlin (2009); Biennial of Tehran (2008 ) or the Museum of Contemporary in Santiago de Chile (2008).

He has received grants and prizes from the Musac Museum, Generalitat de Catalunya, ABC prize or Fundació José García Jiménez.