The Backpackers Hostel Blog

Until Sun 18 May

“Apparatus For The Osmotic Compensation Of The Pressure Of Wealth During The Contemplation Of Poverty”, 2005

Mon – Fri 11 am-7:30 pm, Sat 10:30 am-3 pm, Sun and holidays 10 am-3 pm at MACBA (Plaça dels Angels, 1 -Raval). Fees vary

Alice Creischer inspired by the extremes of poverty she say in her trip to India in 2004, created ‘Apparatus for Osmotic Compensation of the Pressure of Wealth During the Contemplation of Poverty’ that is a reconstruction of her experiences.

She examines the process by which large corporations are created and operate across the world and uses installations, texts, drawings, collages and articles to delve into the relationships between official policy, business, and culture – the source of new types of alienation and exploitation in the modern world. In a second piece, ‘The Painter’s Studio..,’ Creischer reinterprets a Gustave Courbet painting.

The “experimental method” of the images on display here repeats again and again a situation to which there is no solution. It makes out that it’s able to build an instrument: an instrument to compensate the osmotic pressure of wealth when considering poverty. We must not identify poverty with the countries that I have travelled, and wealth with Europe, as if here there were no poverty and over there no wealth. On the other hand however, among these countries there is a history of exploitation which has carried them in an unmistakable direction, and a history of projections and nostalgia for the exotic which goes the opposite way. This history is part of the person who is watching, but she shares it with those who watch her.

Alice Creischer
Text which accompanies the work Apparatus for the Osmotic Compensation of the Pressure of Wealth during the Contemplation of Poverty, 2005

(Taken from www.macba.es)