Category Archives: 2013

We proudly present the exhibition of Fernando Prats Todesfuge, a project that includes works in diverse formats – such as video, installation, photography, paper… – which refer to the poem Todesfuge (Deathfugue) by Paul Celan.

 

 

Paul Celan wrote this poem in 1945, shortly after his return from concentration camp. Published some years later, it had a great repercussion in Germany, where Todesfuge was considered as “a moral lament of art against history”. In the installation, the poet intonates this funeral hymn as if it were truly a musical fugue.

 

For Paul Celan, the task of art consisted in never ceasing to dialogue with the obscure sources. It is this own dialectic spirit, between language and darkness, which attempts to prevail giving sense to the work of Fernando Prats presented in this exhibition. His works, laden with a historical background, are born from an energy set to the limit, represented by smoke as unequivocal materiality. They are works that correlate confronted concepts such as annihilation and harmony, underlining in this way a contradiction that expresses an extreme grief.

 

Fernando Prats constructs this narration from the skies of Auschwitz, from that which occurred during the “Night of broken glass”, the rain, the smoke and the milk as the symbol of maternal nourishment appearing in the image of the “black milk of dawn” (Schwarze Milch der Frühe) with which the poem begins and which grounds the paradox in the matrix of creation.

 

 

Fernando Prats (Santiago de Chile, 1967) has participated in many international exhibitions. He represented Chile in the 54th Biennale di Venezia, 2011; participated in the Mediations Biennale, Poland, 2012; in the second Bienal de Canarias, 2009; the Trienal de Chile, 2009; the Exposición Universal del Agua, Zaragoza, 2008 and has exhibited his work in museums and international art centers such as Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris; Fundació Miró, Barcelona or Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile. In 2007 he received the Grant John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for his trajectory and in 2010 the Prize “Ciutat de Palma Antonio Gelabert d’Arts Visuals”.

Alicia Kopf’s intervention Seal Sounds Under The Floor in Galería Joan Prats owes its context to the project Àrticantartic. The latter deals with the so called “heroic age” of polar expeditions spanning from the late XIX century to the early XX, coinciding with the birth of photography and cinema.

 

The aim of this research is to work from the appropriation and the reshaping of graphical and narrative documents of the polar explorers, turning a historical account into a first person narrative concerning resistance, obsession and the idea of conquest.

 

 

Alicia Kopf presented the individual exhibition Maneres de (no) entrar a casa (ways of (not) entering home) in el Bòlit La Rambla, Girona (2011) and has participated in group shows in CCCB, Barcelona (2013); Fundació Atrium Artis, Les Bernardes, Salt, Girona (2012); Caixaforum, Barcelona, and BIAM (Bienal d’Art d’Amposta), Tarragona (2008), among others. She has received numerous recognitions such as the 2013Art Jove prize awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya (2013); the Kreas grant for cultural and artistic projects from the Girona City Hall (2011).

We present the exhibition by Muntadas Protocolli Veneziani I.

 

 

Muntadas dedicates his work to projects that serve social or political purposes. He develops his works in two levels: perception and information, where the former acts on an emotive level and the latter stimulates reasoning. In his exhibition, Muntadas observes Venice and draws attention to its forms, which he identifies as Venetian Protocols. Protocols are understood as, citing Angela Vettese, “practical behaviours, repair systems, ritualised technical combinations and habits that materialise in a series of architectural accretions”. Operating from a personal perspective, the artist sheds light upon the dynamics of living in the Lagoon today: protocols that become essential, reinventing themselves and adapting to the passing of time.

 

Protocolli Veneziani I, the first phase of a project on Venice, is composed of a collection of images in which the artist reveals the norms that regulate life in the city, creating a framework in which the inhabitants develop their respective existences. Muntadas considers these rules to be shadows and indispensable reflections of the history of Venice, which materialize in vestiges, traces and signs – aesthetics of a particular architecture.

 

The underlying ambition of the project is to reveal the quotidian side of the city hidden from the eyes of the tourist, deconstructing and dismantling reality, replacing it with fragments or clues. What emerges is an image of a city marked by the paradox of a local culture that has been subjected to a process of internationalization, which inevitably impacts the evolution of its protocols.

 

 

Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942) lives and works in New York. He has participated in various international exhibitions, including Documenta Kassel (1977, 1997), Venice Biennale (1972, 1976, 2005), São Paulo Biennale and Lyon Biennale. He has also exhibited in numerous international museums, and given seminars in European and American academic institutions. Muntadas’ work has earned him many awards, including the Velazquez de Artes Plasticas award in 2009.

We present an exhibition on Chema Madoz’s recent work, at Galeria Joan Prats.

 

 

Chema Madoz’s work, close to visual poetry, shows a constant inclination towards symbolism, using images that are characterized by a subtle play of paradoxes and metaphors.

 

With regards to the ‘Still Life’ conventions, his photographs show objects that contain “life” and discover a new dimension of meaning through contextualization, relocation or juxtaposition of common and everyday appearances. In this manner, Chema Madoz shapes an imaginary that challenges our credulity in the picture, and in the existence of an intangible reality.

 

 

Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958) won the National Photography Award in 2000. He has exhibited in museums and art centers such as Netherland Photomuseum, Rotterdam, (2011); Hermitage Museum, Kazan, Russia, (2011); Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Santiago de Chile, (2011); Tecla Sala, Barcelona, (2008); CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, (2007); Fundación Telefónica / Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid, (2006); or Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, (1999), among others. He is currently presenting the exhibition Ars Combinatoria in Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, Barcelona.

In the exhibition Latido antecedentePrevious Heartbeat’ we present the Works and investigations of Javier Peñafiel carried out in the recent years, mainly between Valparaíso and Berlin.

 

 

From his poetic perspective the artist proposes an itinerary through history, retrieving the beats of remarkable characters who opted for critical thinking as a way of struggle and resistance. With long duration Works, such as distancia, miento on the figure of Ruth Berlau (Bertolt Brecht’s companion in love and production) or Locución Merkel-Bachelet a fiction on the possible coincidental encounter of Michelle Bachelet and Angela Merkel in a tram in the DDR in the 70s, Javier Peñafiel extracts and codifies new materials in video, drawn text and photography, disposed in chance meeting operations within the physical space of the gallery.

 

Intimacy deprived of life. “Our present time is of unprecedented harshness concerning the capacity of some sectors to expropriate the experience of the weakest. It is a scenario of utter confusion and demolition of the collective self-esteem. The Intention of this work in its porous time of lecture is to avoid the instrumentalisation of creativity and life by that machinery of the introversion of fear. They are works against fatality and not something else.”

 

 

Javier Peñafiel (Zaragoza, 1964) has exhibited in biennales, institutions and art centers in Europe, Asia and Latin America. His work is included in international private and public collections. He has participated in long-term residency programs in Berlin, Lisbon, NY, São Paulo, Valparaíso, etc. and has more than 14 publications.

Ferran Garcia Sevilla

Galeria Joan Prats presents Ferran Garcia Sevilla’s exhibition The Theory of Evolution, the Evolution of Theory.

 

 

The exhibition gathers a selection of works initiated in the late 60s. The first set represents one of the least known periods of the artist.

 

The exhibition proposes a gaze to get to know and understand different determinant and significant moments in his trajectory showing us the existing link from his conceptual beginning and the continuity of his underlying values, maintaining a non-formal interrelation through time up to his recent work.

 

We show the works;

Os 5, 2011, Mixed media on canvas

Os 1, 2011, Mixed media on canvas

Suc, 2010, Mixed media on canvas

Tibo (selection), 1998, Digital print on paper

Imperi 20, 1983, Mixed media on canvas

Respostes 3, 1974, Photocopies

Ombra, 1974, Digital print on paper

Un centre i un altre centre i un altre centre…, 1972, Typescript text on paper

Meridià, cel amb sol, 1971, Photograph, B/W

Accident, 1970, Glass Shelf, broken glasses

Gran Tensió, 1969, Photocopy and thread

Buit, 1967, Eggs and drape

 

 

Ferran Garcia Sevilla, Palma 1949, lives in Barcelona. His recent exhibitions have been in IMMA Dublin and Seibu, Tokio. He has also participated in group shows of the collection Helga de Alvear Caceres and Galerie Lelong in Zürich amongst others. He participated in Documenta 8, 1987, and in the XLII Venice Biennale.

 

His last exhibition in Galeria Joan Prats was in 2007.