The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain is currently presenting June Crespo. Vascular, a solo exhibition by the Spanish artist (b. 1982, Pamplona). Crespo’s practice extends across drawing, lithography and, as the ongoing exhibition shows, sculpture art and installation art. Vascular brings together a selection of Crespo’s works from the last seven years along with new artworks from 2024, some of which have been created specifically for the show. The art exhibition is on from March 1-June 9, 2024, and is organised by Manuel Cirauqui, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, who joins STIR for an interview that sheds light on the conspicuous sense of barrenness within the artist’s works along with the manner they respond to themes of environmentalism.

Crespo’s sculpture practice is inspired by the Basque style, which arose in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), during the Francoist dictatorship (1936-75) in Spain. The Basque sculptors wished to move away from figuration and instead celebrate the materials that they worked with, which were initially iron, alabaster and wood. Artists such as Jorge Oteiza Enbil (1908-2003) and Eduardo Chillida Juantegui (1924-2002) created works that were often placed in outdoor spaces and were actualised on a monumental scale. Their sculptures established a poetics of contradiction with the environments they were placed in, in that they were composed of natural materials manifested in abstract forms.

Like some of her contemporaries in the Basque scene (Cirauqui mentions Ana Laura Aláez and Elena Aitzkoa), Crespo’s art moves away from a traditional understanding of Basque sculpture and is instead composed of industrially produced materials, such as metal pipes of varying scales, wire meshes, synthetic fabrics and plastic products, along with natural materials like twigs and branches. However, her work does feature certain contradictions and dualisms, such as natural growth vs. human control and the concentration vs. diffusion of materials.

A particularly fascinating aspect of Crespo’s artworks in Vascular is that they elicit a profound sense of barrenness, sitting in sharp contrast to their careful assembly. Cirauqui tells STIR “...bareness is a material characteristic of each individual sculpture…” He is likely referencing a desire on Crespo’s part to use an economy of materials and add no embellishments to her work. He then explains that the sense of careful assembly that these pieces carry comes from the level of care that they have been installed at the Guggenheim and that some of the works on display have even been configured differently than how they were originally installed.

As mentioned earlier, Crespo’s sculptures are composed of natural and constructed materials. It is tempting to view these as opposites within the framework of Basque art and Crespo’s thematics; however, Cirauqui would disagree with this notion. Instead, he suggests that the artist is attempting to highlight their similarities. In the words of the curator, “As to the natural/constructed dichotomy in Crespo's work, I think these terms are not really opposite for her but rather deeply entangled: if a flower's stem is re-scaled to become something similar to a gigantic pipe system, that's because in the first place that flower holds structural properties in common with the built environment or infrastructures. And vice versa: pipes, ladders and rods can be re-assembled to host organic relationships.”

Crespo's sculptures respond to the violence of biopolitical and extractive production today... – Manuel Cirauqui, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Exploring Vascular may be disquieting for audience members who are preoccupied with environmental issues, as many of the works on display are suggestive of the encroachment and degradation of nature by industrially produced articles. Cirauqui extends this beyond the discourse of environmentalism, invoking a wider conversation around hierarchies. He explains that the artist focuses on presenting “emancipatory impulses” within her practice—themes of resistance, decentralisation and dissolution of the hierarchies that we set up between ourselves and nature all inform her work.

The curator concludes his interview with STIR by telling us that he believes the artist’s works blur the lines between the natural and the artificial and embrace a sense of loss of human control, at our current juncture in the environmental crisis. Cirauqui’s parting words perfectly encapsulate the urgency of this exhibition: “Crespo's sculptures respond to the violence of biopolitical and extractive production today…”.

‘June Crespo. Vascular’ is on display from March 1-June 9, 2024, at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.