Juan Garaizabal. Build A Story: Urban Memory of the Lost Tuileries

About

Known internationally for his monumental public Urban Memories sculptures, Juan Garaizabal is bringing his first solo show to New York at De Buck Gallery. Showcasing the Paris segment of his installations, the exhibition will consist of sketches, production patterns, and a series of sculptures (which Juan calls drawings in space) for which the study was done at the original site of the Palais des Tuileries and its surrounding gardens in Paris. Garaizabal’s main drive for the Urban Memories is the concrete, physical resurrection on site of the memory of a historic structure, valorizing and capturing fragments of architectural foundations that have been lost or destroyed over the course of time.

For Urban Memory of the Lost Tuileries, Garaizabal hopes to revive memories and conversations relating to the political history and social upheaval that once marked the site of the palace and the garden of the Tuileries. Garaizabal encourages the viewer to build a story with their imagination, allowing the mind to complete the form of his fragmented vases, arches, or domes. As an important component of his artistic process and inspiration, Garaizabal has dedicated the past six years of his career to the research and development of these sculptural interventions, to which the sketches and drawings on view are an elegant testimony. The artist underlines that his work is not about the past, present, or future, but rather about the connection between all three of them. It is only when an individual projects his personal dreams and thoughts of grandeur onto the works that the works reveal their true energy. Presented in this exhibition are the results of each step in Garaizabal’s analytical process.

The works produced can be described as minimal in presence, sustained by only their most essential mechanisms, and thus showcasing the power of absence and the ability to embrace their surroundings.