JOAN FONTCUBERTA (Barcelona, 1955)."Pin Zhuang", 2004.Comprises: a thermoformed container, an

JOAN FONTCUBERTA (Barcelona, 1955).
"Pin Zhuang", 2004.
Comprises: a thermoformed container, an artist's book together with an original text written by Jorge Luis Marzo, a DVD, eight photographic prints and a sculpture entitled Tiger Zhuang II made up of 21 pieces belonging to the 1:32 scale model of the F-5E Tiger II fighter plane, which the user can build following the author's proposals.
Copy 63/100.
Publisher's page, hand signed and numbered.
Measurements: 44 x 32 x 42 cm (box).
Joan Fontcuberta is inspired by a real event that took place in April 2001, when an American aircraft, which was violating the airspace of the People's Republic of China, collided with a Chinese army fighter. The Chinese authorities seized the sophisticated US aircraft, which only after arduous negotiations was returned, albeit piece by piece. Pin Zhuang in Chinese means 'disassembly' or 'jigsaw'. The idea of undoing and redoing an object from its fragments takes us back to the childhood experience of Meccanoes and dismountable models. With this symbolic gesture, on the one hand, those technological devices that are paradigms of power and violence become harmless objects, a kind of poetic sculptures that pay tribute to the aesthetics of science fiction while critically alluding to the threatening "defence" programmes of the great war powers. On the other hand, the game of disobeying instructions turns these flying ready-mades not only into the object of an aesthetic experience of play and the combination of forms, but also into a pretext for confrontation between authority and subversion, between order and dissidence, between rule and daring.
Artist, teacher, essayist, critic and art promoter specialising in photography, Joan Fontcuberta has developed a successful career, which has earned him awards such as the David Octavius Hill by the Fotografisches Akademie GDL in Germany (1988), the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture (1994), and the National Photography Prize, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture (1998). A graduate in Information Sciences, Fontcuberta teaches Audiovisual Communication Studies at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA). He also contributes to various publications specialising in image. In 1980 he co-founded the magazine "PhotoVIsion", where he was editor-in-chief. As a promoter of events related to the art of photography, he has organised the Jornades Catalanes de Fotografía, collaborated in the constitution of the Primavera Fotogràfica de Barcelona, and has curated important exhibitions in Madrid, New York, Barcelona, Marseilles, etc. His extensive photographic work is characterised by the use of computer tools in its treatment, and by its interactive presentation with the spectator. His language represents a critical vision of reality, photographic, historical or fictitious truths through photography and its context. Between 1985 and 2001, Fontcuberta's work has been exhibited in more than thirty museums and art galleries in Europe, North America and Japan, notably the MoMA in New York, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the IVAM in Valencia, the Parco Gallery in Tokyo, the MNAC in Barcelona, the Redpath in Montreal, the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne, the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao and many others. He is currently represented in numerous private collections and also in many public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan and MoMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the IVAM in Valencia and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires.