Ian Waelder
even in a language that is not your own
Opening: October 19, 2023, 7 pm

Until February 18th, 2024
Location: Exhibition Hall D

Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma
Plaça de la Porta de Santa Catalina, 10
07012 Palma, Spain

Ian Waelder (Madrid, 1993) works by collecting fragments of materials and seemingly fictional stories that have been cast aside and lost to memory. His art explores often intertwined lines of thought, from accidental poetry to memories fashioned from remains or traces left behind, picking out small material stories and stretching the possibilities of language through his life and work.

“even in a language that is not your own”, his new project for Es Baluard Museu, begins by researching his family tree, reflecting on recent history and drawing parallels between body and machine, while also inviting us to reflect on our bearings, speech and insignificant gestures that can replace words.

In this show, Waelder leads visitors along a path and structure far removed from both the museum and the hustle and bustle of everyday life. They are taken on a journey through a kind of interzone, a space between the real and the imaginary. This space might be an oral cavity or the engine room for an abstracted yet strangely familiar place where speech is materially articulated.

Ian Waelder is a Spanish-American artist and publisher. He studied Fine Arts under the mentorship of Haegue Yang and Peter Fischli at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, where he currently lives. His work is primarily based on concepts linked to memory, trace and language, using media ranging from photography and sculpture to sound and installation.

He has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Rome), ethall (Barcelona), Centro Párraga (Murcia), The Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki), L21 (Madrid/Palma) and LOCAL Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago de Chile), among others. He has also participated in numerous collective exhibitions in galleries and institutions such as Francis Irv (New York), Nassauischer Kunstverein (Wiesbaden), Kunstverein Wiessen, the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Salón (Madrid) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid).

Since 2019, alongside his artistic practice, he runs Printer Fault Press, a publishing house specialising in artists’ books.

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