SANTIAGO SIERRA (Madrid, 1966)."Cut on the ground", 1933.Diptych. Chromogenic print. Copy 2/5.Work referenced on the artist's website.Retains label on the back of the Galería Distrito Cuatro (Madrid).Measurements: 212 x 150 cm (x2); 221 x 161 cm (each); 212 x 3 cm (total measurements).In 1993, in Calle Sánchez Pacheco in Madrid, a warehouse was left empty with the aim of being demolished. The space was given to the students of Fine Arts, and it was at this time, in the month of May, that Santiago Sierra carried out this artistic intervention of the space, which he documented through photography. To make the cut on the floor, Sierra made a cut in the pavement and then emptied it, creating a floor within the one that had already been destroyed and leaving the surplus on the perimeter of his intervention. The plane, the line and the rectangles are a constant in the work of Santiago Sierra, in fact, this piece can be understood as the prelude to the work he presented in 2003 at the Venice Biennale, where this interventionism of space, geometry and the remains can also be appreciated, which, as the artist points out in the piece "Cut on the ground", were the place where the spectators passed through, avoiding the new pavement, in such a way as to sacralise it, giving it the category of art. A work similar to the present one is part of the collection of the Helga de Alvear Foundation.A graduate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, he completed his training in Hamburg. He furthered his studies at the Escuela de San Carlos of the Universidad Autónoma de México and in Italy. He has exhibited in important museums, art centres and galleries all over the world, such as the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art ARS 01 (Helsinki), the Kunst-Werke (Berlin), the Kunsthaus Bregenz (Austria), MoMA PS1 (New York) and the Artium (Vitoria), and his work is represented by important galleries such as Helga de Alvear (Madrid, Spain), Team Gallery (New York, USA), Lisson Gallery (London, United Kingdom), Prometeo Gallery (Milan, Italy) and Greenaway Art Gallery (Adelaide, Australia). Sierra's work, charged with social and political demands from its beginnings, attempts to make visible the perversity of the power structures that foster the alienation and exploitation of workers, the injustice of labour relations, the unequal distribution of wealth produced by the capitalist system and discrimination on racial grounds in a world marked by unidirectional migratory flows (south-north). Taking up and updating some of the strategies of minimalism, conceptual art and performance art of the 1970s.