"Since the early 20th century, several artistic movements have redefined, from several fronts, the concepts of Art and Artist, blurring, among other things, the borders between visual arts and other disciplines that were (and still are) considered ‘minor'.

In the meantime, while these struggles were waged in the field of art with greater or lesser fortune, there were serious transformations in the field of popular music. These transformations have materialized as, with a determined absence of prejudice, different musical styles and influences have mixed, enabling the emergence of new cultural and social phenomena, among which we can highlight the unique pop-rock universe, which combines elements from fashion, advertising and the performing arts. Moreover: many of these processes have taken place practically with little or no regard for the opinion of critics, institutions and other controlling bodies, and nevertheless, during the development of these processes, we have also seen the rise of charismatic figures that have acquired social relevance: pop and rock stars. Stars that became what they are by using the tactics of art to differentiate their products and public personae, choosing to explain themselves in elaborate terms and adopting a hyper-reflective discourse where a fundamental role is given to aesthetic issues.

All these events in the world of music are related to the attention being given to the phenomenon of pop-rock and other contemporary music styles in the last few years by a new generation of visual artists, resulting in an intersection between both fields (music and art) that has become one of the most interesting lines of research in the current artistic scene.

[...] In each of these fields (music and art), significant processes have occurred and are still taking place, which are also relevant for the exhibition.

On the one hand, since the 1960s, some pop and rock artists began to produce static and moving images to promote their songs and showbiz personae. These images referred to their performance strategies to present their music and to build their public personae from parameters that often resembled the premises of avant-garde artistic movements. Moreover, a good number of these people collaborated with cinema directors or visual artists to create what was a new product and format called video clip. This collection of performance and aesthetic strategies led to the creation of a complex artistic discourse that projected a real lifestyle, and which was soon to become a cultural and social phenomenon, of crucial importance in the foundation and dissemination of what we now call youth movements and which in turn led to urban tribes.

An essential element of the success of these strategies was based on the potential that the pop and rock worlds have traditionally shown as an instrument for resistance and rebellion in young people, and for being an excellent vehicle for social and political content. In fact, pop and rock have created fascinating works defending socially alternative values, and even though these products have not often achieved massive success, recent publications and authors such as Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson agree on highlighting the singularity of these musical styles and the politics they represent. In their opinion ‘the phenomenon of pop and rock music, focused on the singers from the 1960s, works following a phono-logo-central logic, with the voice, the logos, as a place of truth invoking an idea of social group formed by the music group and the audience. Regarding the promoters of the protest, the singers were to be the political-cultural representatives of their audience, responding to the belief that music could and should be a soundboard for their audience'.

On the other hand, in the art world, a whole generation of artists that have lived or grown up with products from the music world, have incorporated these languages into their artistic work without forgetting their performative aspect. Artists who -in some cases due to problems for acquiring status in the art world- made use of practices common in music, such as the personality cult, inspired by the Hollywood star-system, the insistent search for a generational element, with its specific problems, the use of mass production and a special interest in the idea of collective creation and that creation is not limited to an album, but also encompasses concert performances. In this respect, as witnessed in the sphere of music, there is a total lack of prejudice when it comes to combining styles and disciplines that once again reject the elitism of art and its determination to embrace the interests of the middle, working and other classes, one of the latest techniques for popularising art.

Likewise, in the field of art, we are witnessing a systematic revision of the 1970s; this revision is unquestionably influenced by the considerable political and social content of the art of that period, rekindling interest in artistic practices such as performance or body-art. All these questions have led to the many artistic projects nowadays that result in a recorded "product". These products are the outcome of the application of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary logic, which has become a generational symptom and is presented as a solution to the new communicational needs and concerns of this ‘New' visual artist, who also projects a kind of non-conformism with the mechanisms that move the art world. Moreover, the artworks being created based on these premises, often attack the prevailing concept of a work of art, because the resulting product defies the traditional parameters of the art market, while at the same time questioning the rigid dividing line between disciplines."

Xabier Arakistain
Curator of the exhibition