Ibiza might be best known for its idyllic sun-kissed beaches and intense, 1990s-tinged nightlife, but this summer art lovers have other reasons to visit the Balearic island.
The billionaire art collector and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté—the man behind the local art initiatives Lune Rouge and Art Projects Ibiza—has launched an ambitious show of works by Jenny Holzer in collaboration with the gallery Sprüth Magers, inviting the artist to create a site-specific commission.
Jenny Holzer, ARE YOU ALIVE?, Art Projects Ibiza, Spain, 2016 ©2016 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo Collin LaFleche
The result is the exhibition “ARE YOU ALIVE?,” which opened to the public on June 21, and brings together a number of text-based works by Holzer, ranging from Truisms—a series of footstools and benches emblazoned with aphorisms—and a number of works engraved onto boulders.
Jenny Holzer, Selection from Truisms: The most profound…, 2015 (detail) ©2015 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo Joshua White/JW Pictures.
This is not the first collaboration of Laliberté with a blue-chip gallery. Last summer, he made a splash by joining forces with Blum & Poe to stage a show of new works by Takashi Murakami on the island.
The lavish festivities for the exhibition opening last summer, became the hot ticket of the season on the island.
Ibiza was an international bohemian hotspot throughout most of the 20th century—well before it was embraced by the hordes of clubbers—and Laliberté is not the only one who’s been working hard to revive the island’s artistic and intellectual past.
Since 2013, the Madrid-based gallery Parra & Romero has a second space in the island, a huge refurbished warehouse where they stage solo and group presentations by gallery artists. Currently on view are shows by Adam Pendleton and Robert Barry.
Moreover, on July 22, the gallery is launching a new sculpture park amid the stunning rural landscape of Ibiza, which will feature works by Stefan Brüggemann, Luis Camnitzer, and Philippe Decrauzat among others, curated by Jeróme Sans.