Tragedia, transparencia (2017)

Installation (courtain, carpet, humidifier, expanded publication)

350x240x320 cms

Cuerpos, levantaos (2017)

installation (green paint, vinyl,

intervened Liefarne chairs, Saint Pancrazio figure)

variable dimensions

Publication (2017)

64 pages, digital printed, paper 45 gr

26x35 cms

In bureau désespoir, María Alcaide approaches the subject of work through spatialization as she reconfigures the image of an office. Typical office architecture—divided into cubicles and cut off from the outside world—becomes the place through which vast chains of information flow, accelerating virtual economic transactions. Alcaide begins with the premise that art happens all around us. Yet the lack of stability and clear horizons, combined with the complexity of the capitalistic system, causes artistic work to seemingly both disappear and become omnipresent. From these ideas, Alcaide offers a mise-en-scène with a series of products—blinds, a rug, a briefcase, an air freshener, the book 'The Global Village' by Marshall McLuhan, as well as a publication in newspaper format created for the exhibit—that ironically refer to our collective images around the office. The various objects, referenced in her newspaper’s section 'How to decorate an office', are less relevant as objets d’art as they are for their symbolic and ideological weight.

My job is just about seduction: Alicia, Flippo, Paula, Luis, Constanze.

Series of 5 printed forms, intervened and fill by the artist 

68x48 cms

2021

My job is just about seduction: Alicia

Series of 5 printed forms, intervened and fill by the artist 

68x48 cms

2021

The lack of horizons, of reliable prospects, and the complexity of the capitalist system make artistic work seems to vanish and become ubiquitous in the fabrication of the modern fantasy of art and life. It is in this fading process that Alcaide situates bureau désespoir, a project that explores labour through its spatial manifestation, drawing on the image of the office forged by popular shows such as ‘Ally McBeal’, ‘The office’, ‘Law & order’ as well as a certain subgenre of ‘yuppie’ films.


The sculptures of bureau désespoir respond to the search for a new aesthetic sensibility derived from precarious collages of goods manufactured on the other side of the screen (all pieces include materials purchased on Amazon). That kind of aesthetics, patently superficial, remind us that what matters is not the composition of forms, but the means

of production accumulated in them, from the invisible factories in other continents to the

exclusively informational processes that make up artistic practice.


Complete text by curator José Iglesias available here.

Likewise, they are accompanied by a series of five framed forms that have been filled out and printed with the words My Job is About Seduction. The forms are a test taken from the book How to Succeed in the Staff Selection Process, by Cecilio Benito Alas. Alcaide has answered the questions posed by the test as if she were one of the five bosses she’s worked under in recent years, and their names give each piece its title: Paula, Luis, Filippo, Alicia and Constanze.


On view at Dilalica (Barcelona), Sala de Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid (Madrid), Can Felipa (Barcelona), Sala Iniciarte (Córdoba), SP

Cómo ser elegido en una selección de personal

Cecilio Benito Alas (1979)

13x21 cms


Orgánica motivacional

Vintage briefcase «Gladiator» with motivation letters found on the Internet inside,

picture of the first office with computers, book «The global village, McLuhan and Powers, 1989».

80 x 150 x 50 cms

2017