User:Karanchita/Patsi Patsi

Patricia González Chao (Aragón, 1980) is a famous Spanish artist whose work is distinguished by the manner in which she collects and transforms materials found in the trash or discarded and left to rot. She spent her youth in South America with her family, where she acquired many new traditions such as drinking mate.

Life

While she was a student at the Fine Arts Faculty of Madrid (UCM)^[1], she began a series of projects which were seen to have roots in the tradition of conceptual art because the emphasis was on the artistic process rather than the finished object; most of her works have been preserved only in photographs or written descriptions of the events or objects. After completing her studies she left Spain and traveled through Europe and the United States, it is uncertain which places she visited and for how long, but recently she has been living in Hungary where her work is now moving in new directions.

Works

Patsi Patsi’s works mostly involve photography, performance and installation projects. Her early works were presented at the Galería de Arte Alfa of Madrid included Sonríe (Smile) (2000): a series of drawings of faces on cookies and bowls of oatmeal or cooked cereals; most of these were destroyed after a short period of time. This Gallery also promoted one of her first performances Malditos estudios (Fucking studies) (2003) that took place at a beach in Valencia were she was followed by groups of invited guests from Madrid and surroundings. She took advantage of the fact of the warm San Juan Night^[2], a summer celebration on the eastern beaches of Spain, where people make fires on the beach to receive the arrival of the summer; in this piece she burned all her books and notes from university jumping around the fire until daylight.

Some of her later works were presented abroad, at the Leibovitz Gallery of New York including her famous photography series ¿No te parece asquerosa la comida cuando le haces una foto? Doesn´t the food seem disgusting when you take a picture of it?) (2004) and her series of pictures the television screens, Porquería mediática (Media bullshit) (2004).

The Institut d’art émergent du Paris also exhibited some of her installations including Bolsas Movidas por el Aire (Bags moved by air) (2006) and her perfomances Sécame toda (Dry it all) (2007) in which she dried her hair, and also Maldita pipa (Fucking seed) (2007) where she chokes on a sunflower seeds and spits them for four hours.^[3]

Patsi represented Spain at the Couthon Art Fair in 2008 and she also has shown some censored works at controversial galleries like The Lubric Gallery of Sexual Art of London, and at the famous Bar-Gallery Untermenschen in Berlin. At the moment she is working in Budapest on a new project with which she will present to the Diógenes^[4] competition.