Change of address
Our new blog is at: http://barcelonafreeart.net
A free look at art in Barcelona - a guide to art routes, galleries and sculpture in Barcelona.
Out and proud art 2009
A selection of my own photos of wearable popular art on show at Gay Pride Barcelona 2009:
Gay Pride Barcelona 2009.
After Architecture - Typologies of the Afterwards (1)
Arts SantaMonica, from 20 June to 6 September. 18 artists.
Approaching an exhibition on architecture as a kind of "essay" might seem dry yet it refreshingly smashes some traditional boundaries of expectation to examine the topic from new angles. Curator Marti Peran's aim to "ascertain the effects and transformations that architecture suffers through experimentation in real contexts and real time", provides a discursive thread that links these eighteen artists' widely divergent, even eccentric, perspectives.
Terence Gower Wilderness Utopia, 2008.
Videoprojection: 3'22". Digital printing 89x230 cm.
On one hand, the exhibition stresses architecture's regimenting, orderly function, to control or predetermine behaviour, as David Harvey states, "erect[ing] a built space in order for time to progress smoothly into the future"; yet on the other, inherently highlighting its simultaneous role as a container for real lives, lived experience. This human presence naturally tends to "correct" or modify the premise, creating cracks for entropy to creep through: "a structure of notable cultural complexity will inevitably undergo a multiplication of its inherent processes of degradation and disintegration" with the result that "the modern project has declined into endless sequels produced by its own (dis)solution."
After Architecture is divided into foursections: Back, Around, Interior and Demolition.
After Architecture - Typologies of the Afterwards (2)
Back examines the duality of facades, hiding those "ideological foundations" which, in turn, reveal architecture's "habitual failures".
In Wilderness Utopia (2008), using digital technology, Terence Gower recreates
Within Around, Tim Etchells exhibits City Changes (2008), a series of texts that reference the city as a changing narrative rather than a static structure. The description of each possible urbs begins from the same premise: "There was once a city that..." before diverging into twenty different texts that each propose a different reality, repeating certain elements, drastically changing others, reading the city as a multiplicity of possible realities.
Jordi Colomer's Avenida Ixtapaluca (houses for
Jordi Colomer Avenida Ixtapaluca (Houses for Mexico), 2009
Video and screening room
After Architecture - Typologies of the Afterwards (3)
The section Interior focuses on enclosed space, traditionally identified as a private sanctuary protected from public life. Yet modern architecture reinterprets the inner space as a meeting point, one which use of transparent materials brings into contact with the exterior. Inside, is where humanity can most successfully alter and mutate the original architectural premise.
In Skyline (2007), Mounir Fatmi emphasises this polarity of exterior/interior, into hard/soft, brittle/flexible dualities. Recreating a city skyline out of video cassette cases, magnetic tape streams from its protective casing in a glistening waterfall representing humanity's anarchic messiness. The obsoleteness of this recycled medium stresses architecture's temporality - modernity inevitably evolving into the historical - while the tape itself is a medium on which stories are recorded, thousands of narratives flowing out from the metropolis's fragile cells.
Mounir Fatmi Skyline, 2007
1200VHS magnetic tapes. Installation dimensions: 3.8x8.2 m.
Xavier Monteys offers an installation, La habitacion secreta (2009), a secret room that touches many similar themes in literature and cinema, "spaces which lead to the core of the drama", of which Monteys specifically references two, a Joseph Brodsky text and a William Wilder film. Yet its secret containment also celebrates the room as the city's smallest constitutive cell,a building block for the dwelling, its walls faintly resonating with the life sensed outside.
After Architecture - Typologies of the Afterwards (4)
Demolition is possibly the most passionate section, recording entropy's inevitable triumph over order. Perin declares that "the modernist decision of commitment to the utopian spirit cancelled out Romantic fascination with ruins." Yet these pieces examine the ruins of modernist dreams.
Chris Mottalini photographs the effects of the American crisis in After you left they took it apart: demolished Paul Rudolph homes (2007). He documents the demoralised beauty of bankrupt American dreams, once so optimistically executed in Rudolph's clean, Bauhaus- and Cubist-influenced lines. Yet sagging plate glass dividers, peeling cladding and weeds sprouting in the once-manicured turf are his heritage as the sun sets, throwing receding shadows onto stained walls. His photos capture the scars of past living in these now-abandoned spaces.
Lara Almarcegui's Wastelands Map
The most chilling work in Demolition is Jan Tichy's Dahania.
Jan Tichy Dahania. Yasser Arafat International Airport, 2006Papermodels on sand and framed poster. Dimensions: 120x45x15 cm; inkjet printing 200x35 cm. Courtesy of MagazÃn 3 Stockholm Kunsthall.
After Architecture includes the following artists: Terence Gower, Pia Ronicke, Xavier Arenos, Vangelis Vlahos, Laurent Malone & Dennis Adams, Gregor Graf, Mounir Fatmi, Heidrun Holzfeind, Xavier Monteys,
David and Goliath - my favourite sculptures (4)
The 1992 Olympic Games - possibly the single event that has most radically transformed the city landscape since the Civil War - was likewise responsible for this commission and the creation of the Parc de les Cascades on Poble Nou’s previously industrial terrain.
Antoni Llena’s floating, kite-like mask, effortlessly supported on three delicate, twisting tendrils - although initially greeted with a certain wariness by Barcelonians - is now a comfortable favourite. Its apparently ephemeral construction combined with the huge scale of this deceptively simple, paper cut-out encourages you to raise your face skywards and think leisurely, summery thoughts, become aware of a larger world than yours spinning slowly. Its location is key: emphasising and including not only the open space but the surrounding architecture of Hotel Arts, Torre Mapfre and the modern brick apartment blocks.
While described as an "anti-monument"(1) to the neighbourhood's inhabitants, it's also an attempt to imbue the stark, new suburb with some personality. Hence the symbolism of the little people fighting against the Goliath-like powers of urban development.
Description: Painted stainless steel and resin. 18 x 12.40 x
Location: Parc de les Cascades, s/n
Artist: Antoni Llena
References:
La Nit blanca - white nights in Barcelona - 16 May 2009
Source: europapress.cat/ Fundació Joan Miró
Tonight is the nit blanca in
According to europapress.cat, the Barcelona City Council has organised twelve thematic tours - linked by geographical and thematic proximity - of the 27 museums and 42 art galleries which will open their doors tonight.
The "Night of Museums" is a European initiative aimed at attracting new audiences.
On Montjuïc, the Fundació Joan Miró is offering two temporary exhibitions by women artists: "Her Memory" comprises recent installations by American artist, Kiki Smith, on the life cycle of women, from birth to death, corresponding to the creative cycle; "Shuffle", a retrospective selection of work by Abigail Lazcoz, was inspired by Miró's own preparatory sketches from the museum's archive, which Lazcoz was able to visit.
The Kiss of Death – My favourite sculptures (3)
Welcome to the city of the dead. No admission charged. In the current times of crisis a visit to
This sculpture [1930] by Jaume Barba has an erotic charge that could have inspired Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal[1957], as the work conjures up a similar, creepy seductiveness in the way Death plants its icy, mortal kiss on this kneeling youth’s cheek. The sculpture, unusual in that the figure of Death is traditionally depicted in such scenes as a winged angel rather than this gelid skeleton, is intriguingly anachronistic in a pre-Raphaelite kind of way. Details such as Death’s hollow ribs and tunic are exquisitely rendered three-dimensionally to allow the cavities and spaces to play as strong a role as the form.
Other sights to see in this cemetery – designed by Antoni Genesi and the first to be opened outside
Not particularly artistic (except maybe in a kitsch kind of way), but also worth a look is the obvious cult worship which the tomb of young Francesc Canals Ambrós, alias “el Santet”, still enjoys. Though he died at twenty-two, the famously kind “little saint” is still supposedly responsible for loads of miraculous cures.
The Actress in the Square – My favourite sculptures (2)
“A la gran Margarita Xirgu, actriz de inmaculada historia artística, lumbrera
These words by
The balanced abstraction of this piece conjures the easy grace and lively spirit of a talented performer and energetic intellectual. There is a suggestion of arms raised in a Yerma-esque entreaty to the fertile moon in the upper section – although instead of that character’s plea for pregnancy, this actress might identify with a fuller idea of the female principle embodied there, through the trunk-like strength emanating from the lower torso. The piece’s stark profile redefines its Gothic environment as Xirgu would have reinvented her stage space according to the needs of her performance, a perfect fit between form and space, figure and scenario.
More info on Xirgu at: http://margaritaxirgu.es [in Spanish and Catalan]
My favourite sculptures – Botero’s Cat, Rambla del Raval (1)
Old Tom’s smiling face acts like a magnet of Latin charm on both adults and children of Gitano, Pakistani, Moroccan and the many other nationalities who share the Rambla
I call him old because he’s been around. Purchased by the Ajuntament [City Council] in 1987, he was sited in three other spots around
You can see another of Columbian artist Fernando Botero’s works at
Fernando Botero, Gat, Rambla
Beata Ocaña – 25th Anniversary of the artist’s death
The recently inaugurated
Also on show are some of his larger papier mâche figures of cherubs, virgins and religious icons, designed to be carried in street parades.
Ocaña was a contentious figure throughout the Spanish transition. Forced to abandon his native
Ocaña died in1983 as a result of burns received in a fire in his studio back in his hometown where he was creating one of his elaborate costumes for the local fiesta mayor [village festival]. Apparently, he had designed a huge headdress in the form of a human candelabra, which caught fire.
At the back of this exhibition, you can view an excerpt of Ocaña’s video work, where he maintains a camp dialogue, interspersed with song, with a cut-out figure of Marilyn Monroe.
Open Season on Barcelona Art – 12 hours of inaugurations
Source: "Dotze hores degaleria en galeria", an article by Maria Palau, El PuntNewspaper, 17 September, 2008, p.34.
Tomorrow night, Thursday, 18 September,
While some galleries havedecided to abstain from the mass inauguration – the
Although economic indicators arewidely divergent in their prognostic, many gallery owners are wagering that thecurrent shaky economic climate – la crisis económica,which this year in Spain is taking the blame for everything from a cloudy dayto missing out on that two-for-one special at your local super – will encourage investors to believe that a panel of painted canvas orhunk of cast bronze will provide a healthier return than their recentlydeceased investment bank. Current statistics support this theory.
So if you are in Barcelona on 18September, come celebrate along the Bacchanalian trail with me, and hopefullythrough the rose-coloured glass, find some inspiration for palliating thelooming cloud of economic crisis.
Below is a list of participatinggalleries:
● Galería Alonso Vidal –Fontanella, 13, basement
● Galería Ángels Barcelona– Pintor Fortuny, 27
● Galería Antonio deBarnola – Palau, 4
● Galería Carles Taché –Consell de Cent, 290
● Galería Eude – Consellde Cent, 268
● Galería Ferran Cano –Plaça Medinaceli, 6
● Galería H2O – Verde, 152
● Galería Hartmann – SantaTeresa, 8
● Galería Joan Gaspar –Plaça Letamendi, 1
● Galería Joan Prats –Rambla Catalunya, 54
● Galería Joan Prats-Artgràfic – Balmes, 54
● Galería Llucià Homs – Consellde Cent, 315
● Galería Maeght –Montcada, 25
● Galería Masart – SantEusebi, 40
● Galería René Metras –Consell de Cent, 331
● Galería Safia –Bruniquer, 9, baixos
● Galería Senda – Consellde Cent, 337
● Galería Senda Espai 292– Consell de Cent, 292
● Galería Trama –Petritxol, 8
● 3 Punts Galería –Aribau, 75
Yi School – 30 Years of Chinese Abstract Art
80 works by over 40artists spanning 30 years of artistic reflection, cultural inquiry and protest.
Where: Caixaforum
When: 4 June – 21 Sept 2008
What: abstract art, Chinese art, organic
On entrance, a softly swaying sea of silk.Chinese fans. Disks of white over bamboo hoops. They hang, suspended from theceiling by thin, copper wires. The initial impression is of a subtle femininefigure for gentle contemplation and might be brushed off as such, but a longerlook and the near-motionless passivity of these objects begins to unsettle –like a herd of pale carcasses hung fresh in the abattoir. The militaryprecision with which these cloth corpses have been strung up, the way the taut,neatly ordered wires gleam like prison-camp fences, is chilling. The fact of theirwrongness – a fan's innate activeness as an object to be handled, createbreezes, cool its user, yet symbolic of the utmost femininity and human contact– highlights this crime, of enforced stillness, pushed at only by outsidedraughts, reduced to this gridlocked isolation. With gut-wrenching calm, QinYufen's Silent Wind [2000] draws the viewer from contemplation ofapparent surface calm into deeper metaphors for political repression, women'srights and connotations of terror.
The artists in this exhibition use the Chineseconcept of Yi: an exercise in contemplation of surroundings, or the actualmatter of the materials, through which they reach a deeper comprehension.According to the exhibition brochure, this represents “the creators' state ofcontemplation and meditation, the way in which both artists and poets thinkabout and observe their environment”. It is the key to looking at many of theartworks here. The artist enters a zone of contemplation where creation begins.
Chinese abstract art should not be too tightlylinked to ideas on Western abstraction, or the compulsive, revolutionarybreaking with the old that the latter represents to many people. Abstractionhere stems from a deep-rooted tradition through which Yi creates an“alternative path”, addressing upheavals in society and culture that haveoccurred in
This strong, traditional basis is present inmaterials and colour. Works are executed in the subtle ochre or sienna hues ofnatural pigments with few strong primaries. Yi becomes an exultation of thenatural world over the man-made. Natural forces affecting the artificial, suchas rain falling on paper. Such works often form a vehicle for protest, anexpression of discontent at the political restrictions among which the artistslived and worked.
In Meng Luding's early work, PrimordialMovement [1988], these bulging, organic masses, oozing over and around eachother convey a strong sense of movement, of a formative process. Here geometricshapes are placed in harmonious conjunction, given rein to create pictorialeffects such as landscapes or rivers, literal identification of a kind Westernabstraction rejects.
Likewise, Yu Youhan's Sphere Series [1984-12]conjures up the soft tones of charcoal daubed on white clay, reminiscent ofhand-fired pottery, a flattened sphere inviting the viewer to drift into theallusions.
The cultural importance of calligraphy inChinese culture is paramount. Many pieces play with this association – asubconscious acknowledgement of black ink strokes sweeping a blank paper field.One of the largest and most powerful canvases draws strongly on thisdiscipline. Gu Wenda's Myths of Lost Dynasties [1985], a huge work ofink on rice paper, sets out to destroy the ideological authority of traditionalChinese characters by changing their shape. Written across the canvas, deformedletters read: “Illumination comes from contemplation”. A manifestation of Yi'straditional yet radical nature.
HeYunchang's Rock Touring Around Great Britain [2007] appears moreplayful, demonstrative of the exhibition's wide range of styles. It is alighter piece than some of his other installations. The artist carried a rockaround the
Other pieces are passionate in their intensity.In Existence No. 115 [1985-86], Zhang Jianjun captures, through thehorizontal, lineal progression of his canvas, a sense of the repeating journey,the ultimate, the only journey we ever undertake. Contrasting black and whitedisks create a sense of rushing movement, invoking a sense we are hurtling tomeet our destiny, like a black comet falling into oblivion, which appears as awomb, or as a doorway of light. It simultaneously conveys the threat ofimpending collision even as it suggests the birth of the new cycle.
Equally violent is Meng Luding's StupidPower [2006], two, rough, grey circles cleaved by slashes of bright pink onblack and white grounds, respectively. An important concept to recall here isthe symbolism that Eastern spatial philosophy exercises in Chinese culture, asdivorced from the geometric forms to which we give significance in Westernculture. Although a two-dimensional surface, these representations of thesphere correspond, in traditional Chinese culture, to the origins of theuniverse. “Qi” is a ball of intense energy, concentrated into the primordialchaos. This is art of protest, the fundamental cycle of energy shattered by theintruding human violence of the synthetic, pink paint.
Yet one of the most powerful works in the show appears to break allthese rules. Ding Yi's piece from his series Appearance of Crosses97-14 [1992] is brazen in its use ofcolour while self-consciously deliberate in claiming and reshaping Westerniconography (Scottish tartan). We might interpret it as a kind of visual,Deleuzian “deterritorialisation”, taking something familiar to Westerners (andto Chinese, if the Burberry invasion has reached there as well as Japan)and making it strange. Ding Yi beginshis canvases by dying the stretched tartan a uniform colour, displacing it from the traditional colourscheme. He then works in an apparently random manner, using four fluorescentcolours, over-painting the tartan with tiny crosses. The effect is riveting, creating a swirling panorama ofluxuriant colour to swamp the senses.
Despitethis year's Beijing Olympics and the sizeable community which now calls the Ciudadcondal home, we still remain largely ignorant of the Chinese culture. Thisexhibition brings us closer. Yi – this attuned meditation on the physical environment– carries both creator and viewer into a wider universe of significance.Whether Yi as a concept is strong enough to bind these practitioners togetherso they can be considered a school is debatable, especially over the durationof this thirty-year period. However, the art itself speaks of a healthycreative scene, of a richly contrasting landscape of artists. Yi School – 30Years of Chinese Abstract Art is a unique window onto some of
Yi School – 30 Years of Chinese AbstractArt
4 June – 21 Sept 2008.
CaixaForum,
Av. Marqués de Comillas, 6-8
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