The first solo show in Spain by the artist Álvaro Urbano (Madrid, 1983), "El despertar", was a co-production between Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), Storefront for Art and Architecture and La Casa Encendida. The installation, originally created by the artist for La Casa Encendida, was kept in this venue during 2020 and 2021, during which time it had to close in between due to the pandemic, with the aim of reflecting on the different imaginary of abandoned architecture.
For its second location at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the exhibition takes the name of The Great Ruins of saturn, #greatruinsofsaturn. In it, Urbano, continuing with the theme of "El despertar", presents a film and an installation that resurface in a playful and satirical way stories of the partially abandoned New York State Pavilion (known as 'Tent of Tomorrow'), an enclosure A fair that 57 years ago presented to the world the achievements of technological progress, Urbano's work places the abandoned pavilion in a theater occupied by a cast of inanimate characters, giving them life to question the obsolete and contemporary notions of growth and developmentalism.
The 650-acre fair site was populated by hundreds of temporary structures and attended by 51 million people. Amidst all the attractions, the colossal New York State Pavilion, with its space age design and its boasting rights as the largest and tallest pavilion at the fair, embodied the spectacle of “man’s achievements” (or of those by certain men, such as Governor Nelson Rockefeller, World’s Fair President Robert Moses, and pavilion architect Philip Johnson).
57 years later, this once colorful symbol that sought to project the ultimate vision of progress, optimism, and power lies largely dormant. Its concrete vestige now casts shadows upon its surroundings…and its original vision. While other structures from the fair have been repurposed, rehabilitated, and moved to various sites, the New York State Pavilion, with its central structure known as the Tent of Tomorrow, still awaits its grand departure.
Cueratorship: José Esparza, Chong Cuy
