There Is No Coming Back from the collection. BA Collection

ALBERTO ALBOR, GRETA ALFARO, IZASKUN ÁLVAREZ GAINZA, ELSSIE ANSAREO, ALEJANDRO ARTECHE, ATAKONTU (IBAI LEÓN Y SARA CAMPILLO), ERIKA BARAHONA, NURIA BATALLA, NAIA DEL CASTILLO, JUNE CRESPO, LOURDES DE LA VILLA LISO, CRISTINA FERRÁNDEZ BOX, PAU FIGUERES ORTIZ, CRISTINA FONSARÉ, ANDREW GANGOITI, HELÍ GARCÍA, KEPA GARRAZA, LETICIA GASPAR, MIGUEL ÁNGEL GAÜECA, IGNACIO GOITIA, EDURNE GONZÁLEZ IBÁÑEZ, HELENA GOÑI, AMAIA GRACIA AZQUETA, PATRIK GRIJALVO, JABIER HERRERO, CARLOS IRIJALBA, JORGE ISLA, IRUNE JIMÉNEZ ORBEA, GALA KNÖRR, AITOR LAJARÍN, ERRAMUN LANDA, DAVID MARTÍN ANGULO, NACHO MARTÍNEZ GÓRRIZ, ARA MÉNDEZ, KIKO MIYARES, IDOIA MONTÓN, FERMÍN MORENO, FRANCISCO NAVARRETE, CARMEN OLMOS, LEZURI ORMAZABAL, TXUSPO POYO, MARA REGUILÓN, MABI REVUELTA, ANA RIAÑO, JORGE RUBIO, IXONE SÁDABA, IGNACIO SÁEZ, DORA SALAZAR, IKER SERRANO, EDUARDO SOURROUILLE, JELENA SREDANOVIC, BEGOÑA ZUBERO

“There Is No Coming Back from the collection. BA Collection” is the second exhibition on the BilbaoArte collection produced within the framework of the 2nd Call for Curators, with the aim of giving visibility to the artists featured in the collection and offering new readings and interpretations of the imagery that the works and artists offer as a whole. The initiative also seeks to create a line of support for professionals in the arts and culture sector for the development of curatorial projects.

Nerea Ayerbe and Jaime Cuenca, the curators selected for this second edition, present an exhibition project that reflects on the particularities that characterize and make the BilbaoArte Collection unique. Among other things, its heterogeneous nature: it is not focused on a particular artistic medium or aesthetic language, nor on a school or style; it does not bring together artists from a specific generation or who share convictions, training, or career paths; nor is there a single concept that can explain the collection as a whole.

Another characteristic is that it is a radically incomplete collection, as it consists of works produced by resident artists during their stay at BilbaoArte, which constitutes an unlimited series that is open by definition.

In addition to the above, it is a collection that is determined by a multiplicity of criteria: throughout BilbaoArte’s existence, different artists and managers, under diverse criteria and values, have decided which works to include in the Collection, resulting in random growth. At the same time, the pieces are marked by an unavoidable condition, that of having been produced at BilbaoArte; that is, produced in the same facilities, often next to each other, and always responding to the same spatial context.

To this end, the project comprises a varied selection of 55 works and 52 artists and collectives that have been part of BilbaoArte during the 27 years of the artistic production center’s existence.

In their exhibition proposal, Ayerbe and Cuenca aim to emphasize the condition shared by all the selected works, namely that they are pieces from the same collection. Rather than imposing a narrative or discursive sequence on them, the works are presented in four rooms or sections (The time between their things; Saving what is necessary;

Something new in the others and A secret masked by the collection), groups that seek to broaden each work in contact with others, expand it, enrich it, and encourage the emergence of plural and diverse interpretations by the public. To this end, they seek to challenge the initial assumptions with which the public will approach the exhibition, generating a certain strangeness by opting for a form of installation that is unusual in contemporary art. Thus, the works are presented in a variegated manner in the exhibition space, in the manner of what happened in Baroque art galleries before the chronological arrangement by schools and authors became widespread.

The title of the exhibition, “There Is No Coming Back from the collection. BA Collection”, highlights precisely these characteristics and this particular way of collecting. Something that has made it unique and continues to do so, that defines it and continues to condition it with no possibility of turning back, and that offers those who know it its own unique perspective on the world, which cannot be dismissed without loss. The curatorial proposal and its structure are inspired by the text of the play La colección (2024) by Juan Mayorga, who has managed to bring to the stage some tremendously lucid insights into the vital and theoretical implications of the act of gathering and treasuring pieces, giving rise to the title of the exhibition and those of the four rooms or sections.