Post by evm111 on Aug 3, 2005 18:35:44 GMT -5
EVRUGO MENTAL STATE: In the days of Spain's authoritarian regime, when elements of the anti-establishment were widely persecuted by the Franco government, Alberto Porta was charged with possessing an illegal substance (supposedly) and causing “disturbios anticulturales”. He was convicted under the infamous “Ley de Vagos y Maleantes” (Law of Vagabonds and Criminals, an anti-vagrancy act which permitted the detention of people — even street vendors and itinerant workers — who could not prove that they had legal means of supporting themselves; it was used by the Generalísimo to “clean up the streets” of any and all conduct they deemed to be of a countercultural or delinquent nature). The alleged “loafer” was then sent to a psychiatric hospital in his native town of Barcelona. There, on the prompting of a schizophrenic patient named Armando, Porta decided to change his name to Zush (the fellow inmate apparently baptized him as such) and to create his own state of Evrugo in September of 1968. Armando is considered to be its co-founder. “Like a child who's decided that he doesn't like reality,” writes Pablo Llorca in the January 2001 edition of ArtForum, “Zush submerges himself in a reality strictly his own.” He “decided to break with the quotidian realm, creating a parallel world...a fictitious state...an all-encompassing environment that displaces the real one.” The best description of this hallucinatory creation comes from Porta's own Web-site (http://www.evru.org/): Evrugo's “origin is inspiration. It is a contradictory, imaginary yet real, autocratic and universal state. Its constitution is random. Everything is possible, the concrete and the immaterial. It uses symbols common to all states: language, alphabet, flag, anthem, currency and passport. Its territory is mental, physical, artistic, scientific and mystic...Its heritage is ideas. Its strategy is creative self-healing. Its ideal is to attain happiness. A place for secluction [sic] and expansion.” Evru's “scientific findings are expressed in Asura, his personal alphabet.” Through the invention of this private Evrugan language, the renowned conjurer is better able to put his esoteric visual vocabulary into focus. In the new millennium, Zush was extinguished and replaced by Evru. The new nom de pinceau, which Porta decided to adopt on February 23rd of 2001, became the second incarnation of this well-known, self-taught Catalan artist, scientist, and philosopher. “I eliminated Zush because it is a type of liberation from a figure that had accompanied me since 1968.” Also, “the mental hospital where he was born has disappeared.” But Zush could someday make a comeback because he didn't really die; he was toned down, and in that blurriness, “only faded away”. One source on the Internet professes that in 1999 he issued a series of coins ranging from 5 to 1,000 “Tucares”, but I later learned that this is incorrect; there are only 2 pieces: a 10 Tucares made of nickel, and a 1,000 Tucares made of gold. He has also produced two banknotes: a 9 Tucares and a 100 Tucares. Many prestigious international museums, institutions, galleries and art spaces (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the U.S.) have held individual exhibitions of Evru's sculptures, mixed-media drawings, portraits, and installations; his work is also represented in several distinguished collections.
Débora Llauradó, Evru's assistant, provided some information about the 10 Tucares piece dated “00” (2000): “The coin has a mintage of 15, but they are polished one by one. The idea for their production arose together with Evru's dentist, who is an art collector. They adapted one of the dentist's molds and designed the coins.” The artist's former name, Zush, is written in Asura on the obverse of the piece. On the reverse, superimposed in relief upon a textured web of enlarged, dilated blood vessels, there is an open, king-sized eye; this is the same emblematic motif which appears on Evrugo's national flag. The coin is a well-made “relic”, which truly has the feel and appearance of an archaeological artifact from a seemingly unreachable “altered state” located galaxies away, on a secluded alien shore.
The nickel coin costs 200 Euros, the gold coin is 600 Euros. Débora can be contacted via the e-mail addresses at their Web-site, www.evru.org/
Débora Llauradó, Evru's assistant, provided some information about the 10 Tucares piece dated “00” (2000): “The coin has a mintage of 15, but they are polished one by one. The idea for their production arose together with Evru's dentist, who is an art collector. They adapted one of the dentist's molds and designed the coins.” The artist's former name, Zush, is written in Asura on the obverse of the piece. On the reverse, superimposed in relief upon a textured web of enlarged, dilated blood vessels, there is an open, king-sized eye; this is the same emblematic motif which appears on Evrugo's national flag. The coin is a well-made “relic”, which truly has the feel and appearance of an archaeological artifact from a seemingly unreachable “altered state” located galaxies away, on a secluded alien shore.
The nickel coin costs 200 Euros, the gold coin is 600 Euros. Débora can be contacted via the e-mail addresses at their Web-site, www.evru.org/