Oil paint, image transfer, uv varnish, medical tape on wood and aluminium
200 x 150 cm
78 3/4 x 59 1/8 in
Copyright The Artist & Harlan Levey Projects
Stadion is the portrait of a place, the National Stadium of Santiago de Chile. In the 1970s, this arena was the setting of turbulent and tragic scenes. Spectators cheered above,...
Stadion is the portrait of a place, the National Stadium of Santiago de Chile. In the 1970s, this arena was the setting of turbulent and tragic scenes. Spectators cheered above, but prisoners of Pinochet were tortured below in hidden confines of the building. Marcin Dudek evokes this dual usage of space with the fragmented face of a football player, whose parents were imprisoned in the very stadium where he played. The stadium was built in 1938 to emulate a South American Coliseum. Its form, seen from above, is the base of the centrifugal composition. Within it are dissolved images: a pre-Columbian figure stationed at the stadium’s entrance; a lawyer’s investigative sketch of Pinochet’s abuses; a tunnel running beneath the stadium. Dudek’s distinctive, layered style lends itself to this condensation of time. Taking its color palette from a vintage (1979) photograph, a vortex of energy swirls around the stadium like a feverish crowd or the inescapable wheel of history.