David Medalla

David Medalla (born March 23, 1942 in Manila , Philippines ) is a Filipino sculptor , installation artist , conceptual artist , kinetic artist and performance artist . He lives and works in Manila and Berlin .

life and work

David Medalla began studying at Columbia University in New York in 1955, at the age of just 12, on the recommendation of the American poet Mark Van Doren . He studied ancient Greek dramas with Moses Hadas , modern dramas with Eric Bentley , modern literature with Lionel Trilling , modern philosophy with John Herman Randall, Jr. and attended poetry workshops with Léonie Adams .

He returned to Manila in the late 1950s and met the Catalan poet Jaime Gil de Biedma and the painter Fernando Zobel de Ayala , who were among the earliest patrons of his art.

His performance " Brother of Isidora " in 1960 in Paris at the Raymond Dunca Academy was introduced by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard .

His work was supported by Harald Szeemann at the exhibition " White on White " in 1966 and " Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form " (1969) in Bern and at the Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 in the Department of Individual mythologies shown .

Relocated to London in the early 1960s and co-founded the Signals Gallery in London in 1964, which exhibited international kinetic art. He was the editor of Signals News Bulletin from 1964 to 1966. In 1967 he initiated the Exploding Galaxy , an international association of multimedia artists. From 1974 to 1977 he was chairman of the Artists for Democracy , an organization that was committed to providing material and cultural support to liberation movements around the world. He was also director of the Fitzrovia Cultural Center in London. Between January 1, 1995 and February 14, 1995, David Medalla rented a room at 55 Gee Street, London, where he lived and exhibited. He exhibited seven new versions of his biokinetic buildings from the 1960s (a "bubble machine" and a monumental sand machine).

David Medalla has lectured at the Sorbonne , the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Silliman University and the University of the Philippines, the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht , in the New York Public Library, at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver , Canada , the Universities of Oxford , Cambridge , Canterbury , Warwick and Southampton in England, and the Slade School of Art .

He was the founder and director of the London Biennale in 1998, a free "do-it-yourself" art festival where works by Mai Ghoussoub , Mark McGowan , Deej Fabyc , Marko Stepanow , Adam Nankervis , James Moores , Dimitri Launder , Fritz Stolberg , Salih Kayra and many other artists were exhibited.

David Medalla has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation of America.

Literature and Sources

• Exhibition catalog: documenta 5. Survey of Reality - Imagery Today ; Catalog (as a file folder) Volume 1: (Material); Volume 2: (list of exhibits); Kassel 1972
• documenta archive (ed.); Resubmission d5 - A survey of the archive on documenta 1972 ; Kassel / Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X

Web links

• The Center Of Attention: David Medalla
• Iniva: David Medalla
• frieze : David Medalla (1995)
• [1]
• Materials by and about David Medalla in the documenta archive