Visiting Guggenheim Bilbao
Breathtaking beauty
Written by Nathalie Sobin
Creative Intern at VBAT
After enjoying some delicacies from the charming city San Sebastian we decided to end our trip to the Basque country with a visit to the famous modern art museum Guggenheim, in Bilbao. My expectations were extremely high, since this museum is a magnificent example of the most groundbreaking 20th-century architecture with spectacular innovating design and art.
When I first saw the museum from distance and the fascinating and complexed sculpture-like structure building by the American architect Frank Gehry, I was speechless. One other thing that stroked me was that the museum really integrated really well within the urban pattern of the city and the surrounding area.
A massive dog sculpture made out of stainless steel, soil and flowering plants will be welcoming you when you walk towards the entrance of the museum. The artist is called Jeff Koons and the artwork is suitable called the Puppy. It is at the same time really adorable and fills the viewers, especially the kids with joy, at the same time I wondered, how did he build this?
I just wanted to crawl into it and lay there closely, smelling all the flowers.
His intention by building the plant sculpture was to create a work that references the 18th century formal European garden. Koons designed this public sculpture to create optimism and with his own words, “confidence and security”.
The Puppy is both literally and figuratively still growing.
Another work of Jeff Koons is also placed outside the museum and is featured as playful oversized multi-coloured balloon flowers in stainless steel with transparent colour coating. The sculptures look like dreamy candy. Jeff had been playing with the visual language of advertising and the entertainment industry, and with the intention to communicate with the masses. He experimented with the limits between popular and privileged culture. The sculpture the “Tulips” is a part of his Celebration series, created year 1994 by Koons. The collection is focusing on mass-produced products for examples birthday parties and for other festive events. With both the Tulips and the Puppy, Koons manipulated scale and played with materials.
Once I walked into the museum I was speechless once again. I was walking inside the “The Matter of Time” eight sculptures by Richard Serra. The Sculptures are made out of weathering steel and dimensions variable.
The different artist’s sculptural shapes, from a double ellipse to a complexed spiral induces a dizzy feeling of space in motion once you start your walking the path inside of the sculptures.
You will notice that the shapes appear in unexpected proportions, sometimes low, sometimes high and narrow. Serra’s intention behind his installation was to create an installation that also includes a progression in time. There is also a chronological time that it takes to walk through the whole installation. You will both experience fragments of visual and physical memory repeatedly.
Suddenly a massive pair of silver metallic shoes is appearing inside of the exhibition’s space. It is Joana Vasconcelos overwhelming artwork called “Marilyn”, a pair of two shoes in stainless steel pans lids and concrete. Her work primarily explores the theme of identity covering the private as well as the political and social spheres. Joana’s artwork is known to be extremely technically complex and often features movement, with sound or light. She is creating her magic in her studio in Lisbon together with a huge team of collaborators. When I saw these beautiful shoes from a distance I didn’t realise they were made out of cooking pans until I walked really closely. A lot of her work is build out of materials such as household items, bottles, fabrics, medications, telephones, cars or plastic cutlery.
Another truly inspiring artist that I have always been really touched by is the famous artist Marc Chagall, born in a Hasidic Jewish family in Russia. His work is reflecting his complexed home life together with the most innovative stylistic experiments of the Parisian avant-garde. Later on, World War I erupted during his time and this led to a phase of intense soul-searching, which you can see from many of his paintings from that time.
I could write a whole novel about this outstanding museum, but unfortunately, I don’t fit it all here. I was blown away from all the craziness, beautiful artwork and really exhausted from all the visual and also physical moments I had experienced from the visit.
Guggenheim is a museum you must visit in your life, book a ticket today.
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written by Nathalie Sobin, Creative at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme, PR at VBAT
