A new gallery poses a beginning, a beginning poses a problem in its most basic form: an idea, a project, an effort. A good start requires precision and the ability to say things simply, at eye level.
A good start requires a new attitude, a regenerated attitude.
For this start of the season the attitude we are looking for is to say ENOUGH!… This is an explosion, like Punk. An attitude full of rage, speed, noise, incorrectness, nonconformity, denial, opposition and provocation that originated in the British countercultural scene in the seventies of the 20th century and that spread throughout the creative, social and political scene globally. An explosion whose effects make punk one of the most influential cultural references of the 20th century and which today is reinforced by contemporary cultural shifts.
This alternative way of perceiving society developed from a few bands born around fanzines, fashion stores and concert halls that showed their opposition to conventions and the sociopolitical landscape, making denial, speed and lack of virtuosity its leitmotif. It was a reaction to a society marked by the end of the hippie dream, the return of conservatism, the appearance of terrorism, the oil crisis and the lack of future for young people condemned to unemployment. “No future” was one of the slogans that punk.He appropriated previous cultural movements such as Situationism and Dadaism. But unlike them, punk emerged in the midst of mass culture, which led to its expansion beyond the Anglo-Saxon world and escaped the limits of music. This expansion surpassed the concrete historical phenomenon, turning punk into an adjective that qualifies a way of understanding the world.
The goal of PUNK. It is about corroborating an intuition that beyond the divisions that exist between artists, trends or media, there is a rabid noise that unites many creators. That is to say, the punk attitude, whose history can be traced from Dadaism to Situationism, is still very much alive in contemporary artistic production. To return to the famous phrase “punk is (not) dead” is to affirm that punk is indeed one of the living dead, a zombie that has continued to gain followers.
None of the artists in this exhibition were witnesses of the original movement by birth, but in them we find the use of elements that revive that attitude in a new moment, such as noise, cut-out typography, anti-design and ugliness; or the inclusion of direct musical references. Punk as an attitude: denial, opposition and destruction; DIY; the reference to fear and terror in a society that alienates individuals; nihilism; criticism of the economic system and anarchy; and the very demand for a sexual neoliberation, the body as a place of battle in a new contemporary artistic production and its strong union with the attitude of the seventies. ̈Punk Beginnings 2022 – New tracks ̈ reveals the main elements that define the attitude of a new generation of artists as a way of understanding culture and, by extension, of being in the world.
PUNK HAS NOT DEAD. LONG LIVE PUNK.