Category Archives: 2015

We present Hernández Pijuan 1977-2005, an exhibition dedicated to the 28-year-long close collaboration between Joan Hernández Pijuan and Galeria Joan Prats. The pieces selected correspond to the broad period of 1977-2005, but mostly focusing on the very last years of his career.

 

Although the set of pieces corresponds to a large period of the artist’s production, this exhibition does not have a retrospective character.

 

Galeria Joan Prats will present works on paper (gouache, watercolour, pencil drawing…) and oils on canvas of different sizes, as well as a selection of the archive of the artist – sketches & photographs, thus allowing the discovery of his creative environment and some of his projects or work processes.

 

This exhibition intends to be a tribute to the artist, an expression of gratitude and friendship but also a recognition and showing of a work that is still as contemporary as it was in its beginnings.

 

 

Joan Hernández Pijuan (1931-2005) has been one of the most internationally renowned Catalan artists. He has taken part in exhibitions at prestigious international art centres and has also received several awards, as for example the Premio Nacional de Arte Gráfico, in recognition for his trajectory (2005), the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona of Plastic Arts (2004) and the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (1981).

 

Among his most outstanding exhibitions it could be pointed out his participation at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); Tornant a un lloc conegut… Hernández Pijuan 1972-2002, at the MACBA, Barcelona (2003), travelling exhibition at the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel, the Konstshalle Malmö and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna de Bologna; Hernández Pijuan-drawings 1972-1999, at the Rupertinum Museum in Salzburg (2000) and Espacios de silencio 1972-1992 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1993), that was also exhibited at the Museo de Monterrey, México.

 

Recently his work has been shown at a retrospective exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art; at the exhibition Farben der erde, at the Altana Kulturstiftung in Bad Homburg, Germany and at the exhibition La distancia del dibujo, travelling to the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, Cuenca, the Museu de Montserrat and the Museu d’Art Espanyol Contemporani, Palma de Mallorca.

Following a line of long-haul research about the relevance of producing artworks, Perejaume proposes a minimalist experiment, with two new works.

 

Throughout his artistic production, Perejaume has always questioned the space devoted to works of art. The space, understood as a physical place, such as outer space or place of exhibition –gallery, museum- but also the mental space. To make room for artworks also refers to a temporary notion: how much time do we dedicate to see the works? What place do they have in our lives?

 

The exhibition can be seen as an intimate and theatrical representation in two times.

 

The anteroom, with dark walls, introduces us to the gallery with the phrase: Don’t you think that artworks are starting to be as valuable as the space they occupy? There are so many works; can’t you hear them repeatedly saying to their visitors and to their makers: “We don’t fit, please make more room for us”?

 

The first room is dedicated to a single photograph in black and white, made from the exposure of 140 still frames from the film “El Ball de l’Espolsada”, which was filmed in 1902. The film was commissioned to Napoleón studio in Barcelona when, in the early twentieth century, this popular dance was recovered after fifty years in oblivion. The restoration of this material allowed to rediscover the original choreography. The film, which is one of the oldest footage of Catalonia, belongs to the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and is deposited at the Filmoteca de la Generalitat de Catalunya.

 

In the second room, we found an imposing movie projector that presents the film Projecció cinematogràfica del llegat Cambó. Cambó’s legacy is a collection of fifty two paintings by European masters from the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries (Veronese, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens, Metsys, Gainsborough, Le Brun, Goya, Fragonard, Quentin de la Tour, Lucas Cranach, Tiepolo…). It is the selfless contribution of more value that MNAC has received and it comes from the political and patron Francesc Cambó (1876-1947). In the projection, the legacy is flowing rapidly as a chromatic flare.

 

 

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Perejaume (Sant Pol de Mar, 1957) has received awards such as Premio Nacional de Arte Gráfico de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Premio de Artes Plásticas del Ministerio de Cultura and Premi Nacional d’Arts Visuals de la Generalitat de Catalunya. He has recently curated the exhibition Maniobra de Perejaume at Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona. He has shown his works in exhibitions such as ¡Ay Perejaume, si vieras la acumulación de obras que te rodea, no harías ninguna más!, La Pedrera, Barcelona; Imágenes proyectadas, CAB Centro de Arte Caja Burgos, Burgos; Amidament de Joan Coromines, Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca, La Pedrera, Barcelona; Retrotabula, Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Granada, Artium Vitoria. He has participated in internationals biennials such as Prospect 1 New Orleans (2008), Art Unlimited, Basel (2006), 51st Venice Biennale (2005). He has recently published Mareperlers i Ovaladors, Edicions 62, Barcelona (2014) and Paraules Locals, Tushita edicions, Barcelona (2015).

Prova rebutjada (Tout va bien)

 

Prova rebutjada (Tout va bien) -*Evidence rejected (Everything’s OK)– offers a journey through works united by their liminal character and by their poetic way of determining their political status, common thread of their method of resistance.

 

The name of the exhibition combines the titles of two works presented in the exhibition: Prova rebutjada, by Joan Brossa, and Tout va bien, by Muntadas. While the first title asserts with administrative rigor a reality without revealing that it has no escape, Tout va bien brings an immediate comfort, but projecting a sarcastic precariousness. This declaration, contained in the signs of its ambiguity, casts an ironic light on these triumphalist slogans of the 2000s, slogans that did not hesitate to relate the economic effervescence with promises of happiness. The exhibition brings together, in this line, works that mobilize strategies and micro-political spaces to question hegemonic discourses. In front of the apparent consistency of the dominant narratives, most of the works opt for a juxtaposition of ideas and a brief structure reminiscent of the form of the haiku.

 

Prova rebutjada (tout va bien) refers to the rhythm of gestures presented in the works: vital and content modest gestures that, instead of claiming their impact, they influence with critical tactics against the established narratives.

 

Artists:
Joan Brossa, Cabello/Carceller, Hannah Collins, Carles Congost, Ariadna Guiteras, Lola Lasurt, Mariokissme, Muntadas, Javier Peñafiel, Perejaume.

 

 

Curated by: Olivier Collet & Patricia de Muga

solid surface, 2015

 

Galeria Joan Prats is pleased to present solid surface the first exhibition of Annika Kahrs in Barcelona, which brings together her most recent video works.

 

Annika Kahrs primarily works with film, performance and photography. She is interested in both social and scientific constructs, as well as evolved organic relations such as those between humans and animals. In her work Annika Kahrs examines representation and interpretation. Her films oscillate between obvious staging and documentary-like observation; a distinctive implication in Kahrs’ videos is that she never hides herself in the film, even if her presence is only unveiled in a short glance from an actor to the director, it reveals a singular approach to her environment almost guided by a mathematical process.

 

Annika Kahrs presents solid surface, with hills, valleys, craters and other topographic features, primarily made of ice – her latest video work about the dwarf planet Pluto. This film is set in a planetarium with a projected starry sky, where in the centre a round spot of light is located, invariably suggesting the moon. After watching carefully, the celestial body appears to be a spotlight that detects this nocturnal illusion and reveals the white projection screen. In this work, the artist resorted to imaginative as well as narrative devices to paint a portrait of Pluto, as our vision of it seems destined to change soon: a NASA mission will reach its orbit and, for the first time ever, close-up photographs will be taken of it. So far, even scientific illustrations of the planet have been based on speculation, and this imminent shift from imagined picture to actual depiction, according to Kahrs, is why Pluto became the ideal protagonist for her work.

 

The relationship between fiction and reality also plays a role in the video Sunset-Sunrise. In this film the viewer understands that he or she is observing a sunset: the star glowing red on the horizon. Gradually the picture lightens, a glistening veil moves across the picture from below, finally the projection is pure white. The riddle unravels itself as the camera moves backwards, disclosing that we are in a lecture theatre. We are not the witnesses of a strange natural spectacle, but rather just viewers of a projected sunset that is slowly dissolved in real sunlight, as the blinds in the room are raised.

 

In études cliniques ou artistiques, Annika Kahrs films a woman, who adopts body positions that seem to be gymnastic exercises or yoga postures. It is the artist herself who is giving the performer the precise instructions according to photographs from the Parisian psychiatric hospital, la Salpêtrière, showing the poses of the ‘major hysterical seizures’, a term coined by Charcot. In this film Annika Kahrs deconstructs not only the male gaze, but also, she unmasks photography as a staged medium in terms of documentation.

 

 

Annika Kahrs (Achim, Germany, 1984) lives and works in Hamburg. She has been awarded a number of prizes and scholarships including the George-Maciunas-Förderpreis in 2012, donated by René Block. In 2011 she won first prize at the 20th Bundeskunstwettbewerb of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Kahrs has exhibited internationally, including Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2015), Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2015), On the Road exhibition in Santiago de Compostela (2014), the Bienal Internacional de Curitiba, Brazil (2013), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2013), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012), Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn (2011), Goldsmiths University, London (2011), and the Velada de Santa Lucia festival in Maracaibo, Venezuela (2010). She will participate in the 5th Tessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art next June.

Nidal

We are pleased to present Nidal, the first exhibition of Victoria Civera at Galeria Joan Prats, which includes a series of objects and drawings made by the artist in recent years.

 

Nidal* symbolically describes Victoria Civera’s way of thinking in her work process, providing an order of rhythm and movement in her pieces, which grow slowly and haphazardly, weaving an infinite membrane made of materials, objects, surfaces, color and differentiating skins, as if they were isolated words.

 

Its development is a reflection without pause, between silences and whispers, where Civera seems to invite us to a journey, to a concentric experience based on a logic of poetical thought, where the artist goes to meet with the phrase, event, subject and work. Mixing vocabularies and hybridizing playfull syntax, exposing cracks where figuration and abstraction overflow their conventional boundaries, her work grows joining friction and senses, facing her childhood and recreating it with reflection, drama and humor.

 

The words of the poet Paul Valéry could approach us to the echo of Victoria Civera’s work: “Poet, it is not one image that I seek, but the marvelous group of all possible”.

 

 

* Creation, desire, illusion; principle, foundation, reason why it happens or pursue something: belief.

Refuge, interior, home, thinking, introspection, double mirror.

 

 

Victoria Civera (Port de Sagunt, Valencia, 1955) lives and works between New York and Saro, Cantabria. Among her solo exhibitions, there are Sueños inclinados, IVAM, Valencia (2011), Atando el cielo, CAC, Malaga (2010), Túnel eterno, Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Granada (2006), and Bajo la piel, Espacio 1, MNCARS, Madrid (2005). She has also participated in exhibitions in art centers such as CGAC Santiago de Compostela, MAS Santander, Caixaforum Barcelona, Mumok- Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Viena, MACBA Barcelona. Her work is at institutions and museums’ collections such as MNCARS, IVAM, CAC Málaga, Es Baluard de Palma, Artium Vitoria-Gasteiz, Colección Banco de España, Col·lecció “la Caixa” or Patio Herreriano Valladolid.

Altamira

We are pleased to present Altamira, the third exhibition of Caio Reisewitz at Galeria Joan Prats, which brings together his most recent work, such as photographs, collages and video.

 

Altamira refers to a Brazilian municipality, where a forest called Belo Monte, bordered by the Xingú river, will disappear due to the construction of the third largest hydro plant in the world. This project has been widely contested since it will represent a huge environmental impactand will put at stake the survival ofmanyindigenous peoples.

 

Caio Reisewitz’s work explores the exploitation of ecosystems by the man and their destruction involved. Paradoxically, in his photographs, we see an untouched nature where human presence seems deleted. The artist often records the hectic attempt of his country to achieve economic development, and details the global ecological problems arising from the indiscriminate destruction of Brazilian forests, leaving a space for the hope that nature and human culture can share the same interests someday.

 

As a background to the show, there it is the recent disclosure in Brazil of several scandals involving corruption, such as a major operation organized by the federal police called “car wash” (Operação Lava Jato) that has affected some public figures, and also a state of anesthesia and fantasy, an emotional conjunction that is present in all the works shown.

 

 

Caio Reisewitz (São Paulo, 1967) lives and works in São Paulo. He has recently presented his first big solo exhibition in USA at the ICP – International Center of Photography of New York. He has taken part in Daegu Photo Biennale, South Corea (2014), in Curitiba Biennale, Brazil (2013), in LARA Latin American Roaming Artist Project, Colombia (2013), in Nanjing Biennale (2010), in Bienal del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina (2009 y 2007), in Venice Biennale (2005) representing Brazil, and in São Paulo Biennale (2004). His work has been exhibited in art centers of Europe and South America such as Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Goiás, Goiânia, Casa da Imagem OCA São Paulo, Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro, Grand Palais de París, Centro de Arte Huarte de Navarra, Somerset House of London. In 2015 he will present a solo exhibition at the Huis Marseille Museum voor fotografie of Amsterdam and at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie of Paris.