• Fountain (aluminium, motor and water)
• 75 x 100 x 40 cm

Small common catastrophes, transgressions of the place: a dog lifts its leg and pees on the wall of the main façade of the Artium museum, in Vitoria. It is El perro de Tonetty (Tonetty’s Dog), a dog-fountain (following in the wake of Duchamp’s urinal) conceived by Eugenio Ampudia for this centre: a vulgar dog created in aluminium that incessantly shoots water against the wall driven by an engine. In Ampudia, the deceitful aesthetic issue soon gives way to reflection: the concept of the artistic territory, the work of art as the de-idolisation of its own definition, and the context of the museum as a space that triggers contamination. According to Ampudia, the dog “in a way states that the museum, for the time it is on show within, is the place where I carry out my strategies, in the same way as the dog carries out his by marking his territory with urine”.

Text by Piedad Solans. LÁPIZ Revista Internacional de Arte nº 230-231, February / March 2006.