Alberto Porta y Muñoz

Alberto Porta y Muñoz, (Barcelona, 1946) is a Catalan artist with autodidact formation, known as Zush since 1968 and Evru since 2001.[1]

Biography

Porta felt a big attraction for drawing and the human body since he was very young. Son of businessman father and designer mother, he was surrounded by mannequins and drawings of clothes designs. In 1962, at 16 years old, he knew the gallery René Metras and this interests for the young Porta that presents how an artist pop. In this sense, René was an "artistic father" for Porta owing to his support to the start of his career.

In 1964, shares his first study with Jordi Galí and Silvia Gubern where they organised small exhibitions together with Ángel Jové and Antoni Llena. Later this group would know the group of the Jardi del Maduixer. The same year, at René Metras gallery, he showed his work to the public for the first time in the collective exhibition "Presencias of nuestro tiempo".[2]

An exhibition in 1966 titled "Galí, Fried, Porta" was considered by the surroundings how one of the first samples of local Pop.[3]

In 1967 he took part in the Biennial of Sao Paulo with three works: Boso, Fisis y Solomo.[4]

In 1968, his last year how Albert Porta, realises his first individual exhibition titled "Alucinaciones". During this same year, after living three months in a psychiatric of Barcelona, will turn into Zush.

From 2001, Zush will disappear and will turns Evru (2001–).

In 2017, The Great Bell Dongda is part of the vineyard Mas Blanch i Jové (Catalonia).[5]

Work

When Albert Porta was a child he copied the cortex of the trees until a dog urinated to envelope of these drawings. This fact was determinant for his conception of art and life. It understood that it did not have to represent only the visible shape of the things.[3]

It is as if that dog had said to me that was what it was doing, painting the surroundings in an identical way, did not bring me to any place. That had to look to my interior.[6]

In this first artistic period, Albert Porta highlighted his white sculptures of plaster, collages pop, and paintings on the life of his alter egos, Boso and Solomo.

In 2009 he realised the retrospective exhibition PORTA}ZUSH at the Foundation Suñol.[7]

In 2015 he incorporated his work to the exhibition storm Of the second origin. Arts in Catalonia 1950–1977 to the National Museum of Art of Catalonia.[8]

During the exhibition [ZUSH.TECURA] at MACBA, in 2001, he adopted a new pseudonym of EVRU – the name composed from the first four letters of his conceptual creation, Evrugo Mental State (1968)–.[9] On February 23, 2001, by means of digital technology and multimedia representation Zush made a way for Evru to emerge from his own ashes.

He is known as for his earlier use of digital technology for more conventional media such as painting or drawing. He was a forerunner in the implementation and normalization of art therapy, introducing workshops for mental patients in public fine art institutions such as MACBA (2000-2001) in collaboration with Fina Alert, José Lebrero Stals, the latter as the chief curator of the exhibition at that time in MACBA.

His production from the late 1980s to mid 1990s is clearly influenced by the presence of digital technology that he coins "PsycoManualDigital"; as a man of today, inevitably one has to live with the three dimensions of their reality; one's psyche (psycho), the body- hands (manual) and technology are the ritual and universal prosthesis of the present (digital).[10] One of the works which embodies the above concept is his first CD-Rom PsicoManualDigital, the very first CD-Rom, developed in collaboration with José Manuel Pinillo, Mubimedia (Barcelona). It won a prize from ADI-FAD LAUS Trophy (Barcelona) in 1999.

Biography

In 1968, artist Alberto Porta adopted the name "Zush" after being confined to a mental institution in Barcelona, by the then totalitarian regime of Franco. He operated with the pseudonym for 33 years of his career. In the same year he created Evrugo Mental State, his conceptual state which originates thereafter creation of his own alphabet, the national anthem of Evrugo Mental State (composed by Tres), flag, banknotes -Tucare -, etc.

In 1975 he was awarded a scholarship from the Foundation Juan March and William Fulbright Foundation to study holography applied to the fine art at M.I.T. (Boston).

In 1976 he exhibited Después del eclipse at the Vandrés Gallery by Gloria Kirby and Fernando Vijande.[11]

In 1977, he took part in the Documenta VI, Kassel.

In 1980, took part in New Images from Spain, (1980), Guggenheim Museum, New York.[12]

In 1986, Scholarship awarded by the D.A.A.D., Berlin.

In 1989, Took part in the exhibition Les magiciens de la terre (1989), organized by Centre Pompidou of Paris.[13]

In 2001, Zush divested his alter personality that had accompanied him for thirty-three years of his career during the retrospective show ZUSH.TECURA at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) in order to give birth to Evru.[14]

Work

The work of Zush characterizes the building of an autobiographical personal mythology. His own cartography nourishes the accumulation of images that reference to the notions of body, and all its extensions: mind, sex and time, and of the creation of a writing, a personal code –asura– that pretends to express all that is not possible to explain in a rational way. These elements organise multiple parallel universes that keep a delicate balance between what is apparently chaotic and monstrous and rational composition. The will of demystifying the figure of the artist and his diversity of interests has carried Zush to use an extensive spectrum of media that make it difficult to catalog: painting, drawing and graphics to assemblages, photography and collage, the book, the audible recording. Zush has often manifested his confidence in the creative potential of all people, and also in the therapeutic character of the art. For him, any person potentially contains an artist, a scientist and a mystic. How in the work of artists that have worked across the limits between reason and madness, the work of Zush expresses the multiple personalities that populate our consciousness, other realities that reason is not able to express, and that find in the artistic creation a territory releaser that awards to the art a cathartic paper and, is somehow, therapeutic.[15]

Prizes
  • 1997: National Prize of Engraving for his innovations in the graphic art.[16]
  • 1999: Prize Laus for his CD-Blunt PsicoManualDigital.
  • 2000: Press City of Barcelona for the exhibitions Zush. The Campanada (MNCARS, 2000) and Zush.Tecura (MACBA, 2000-2001)[17]

References
  1. "Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana" (Catalan).
  2. "PORTA (1946–1968)" (Spanish).
  3. "Zush" Lebrero Stals, Jose, 1994, Ediciones Polígrafa S.A.
  4. «Catàleg IX Bienal Sao Paulo". (English)
  5. "MAS BLANCH I JOVÉ". www.masblanchijove.com. Archived from the original on 24 September 2017. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
  6. Vidal, Jaume. Interview Zush
  7. «PORTA}ZUSH 1961–1979" (Spanish).
  8. National Museum of Catalonia "Del segon origen.
  9. "Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana" (in Catalan).
  10. "Zush (1968-2001)" (in Spanish).
  11. "cartel exposición arte contemporáneo español de los años 70". libreriaelastillero.com. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
  12. Catálogo New Images from Spain Archived 25 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine (english).
  13. "Zush - Les magiciens de la terre" (in French). Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 7 August 2016.
  14. TECURA (Exhibition), MACBA, 2000 «ZUSH.
  15. "MACBA Zush" (in Catalan).
  16. «Historia Premio Nacional Arte Gráfico». (spanish)
  17. Premis Ciutat de Barcelona(catalan)

Official web - Evru.org

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