Category Archives: 2021

Alicia Kopf Story of my eyes

Historia de mis ojos, 2021

15′. 16 mm movie transferred to digital

 

November 24, 25, 26:

Screening in loop 11-14h / 16-20h

November 27

Screening in loop 11-14h

 

November 24 & 26, at 7pm:

Screening + presentation by Alicia Kopf
RSVP: galeria@galeriajoanprats.com

 

Storyline:

A visit to the eye doctor is the starting point of this journey towards the origin of life, beyond our planet and inside a woman’s consciousness. An approach to the intimate blind spot that originates an individual life.

Teresa Solar

3D Virtual Tour

October 27 at 7:00 p.m. Guided visit by Olivier COLLET

Limited capacity. RSVP at galeria@galeriajoanprats.com

 

 

During the Barcelona Gallery Weekend, we present Teresa Solar’s second solo exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats, in which we will show recent sculptures and drawings.

 

 

Teresa Solar. Time of worms, or the infinite powers of the subsoil

 

Close your eyes. Imagine how these, like two marbles, turn inwards, and fall. They fall down inside your body like two rubber balls, bouncing off the walls of your entrails, your organs, your orifices. Sometimes they slide fast, others are slowed down by the viscosity or some cavity they find; But they are falling, falling, falling. Submerged in that inner darkness, your eyes begin to update their perceptual form, expanding their visual sensorium, that is, seeing-touching, seeing-feeling, seeing-falling.

 

They fall even beyond your body, crossing the ground you step on, entering the thousand layers of earth, stones, remains, of constructions, structures, and times that crowd the subsoil. They move agile through these strata, at times stopping in gaps here and there, seeing without seeing in the blackness that reigns. The deeper they go, and the more they get muddy in that telluric density, the operative divisions of the objective world dissolve to give way to an undifferentiated materiality, full of powers. A sort of dry sea, where they rest in a stagnant, almost rotten time, the fossils of many possible futures.

 

How is this haptic image perceived by your eyes? How is this chronic time that they reveal? Perhaps the pieces that Teresa Solar presents in this exhibition, El tiempo de las lombrices (Time of Worms), seek precisely this: to show us an experiential image of what is unknown and hidden that we step on, that we walk through, and that inhabits us. It is not a pristine and objective image, like the cut of an engineer or surgeon, but rather a dense and nocturnal object, which tries to embrace all the dimensions that compose her and that escape our capacity for representation. For this, the artist displays a practice similar to a dowser’s practice, activating an imagination that runs through tunnels, passageways, galleries and cavernous systems buried in the bowels of both the earth and the body. The daily use of the Madrid metro, as a transit place “that allows us an exogenous relationship with the earth’s mantle”; the analysis of its own vocal cords; or the speculation about the underground life of worms in the title, are all important references for Solar in this project.

 

A group of wall drawings welcomes the exhibition: Formas de Fuga (Forms of Escape) (2021), in which tongues, glottis, pharynx, genitals, jaws or other soft organs languidly open before our gaze in a salmon tonality. It is followed by Eco Chamber (2021) is composed of two diptychs made with a black marker, which show a clean cut of the fold, an indefinite flesh from a lens that allows us to appreciate its different layers and sections. In the next room rests the group of pieces Hermafrodita (Hermaphrodite) (2021): cavities of some body —geological or animal— that the claw of a bulldozer, or perhaps creature, has violently torn apart, like their tattered edges show. Its shapes are reminiscent of immemorial marine animals, or the shells of nameless specimens, while the saturated and strident colors that cover its interior walls are a reference to the colors that the operators of the subway and other underground infrastructures normally wear. Dazzling colors, whose brightness does not respond so much to the light that they are capable of reflecting, but to the conservation through the act of shining of that darkness in which they move; definitely, “the color of darkness itself” according to the artist. Finally, the series Nacimiento (Birth) (2021) shows a system of orange communicating vessels, in which various cellular patterns intersect and evolve symbiotically until culminating in the eruption of a tooth.

 

Solar reminds me of a quote from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut in which an alien from the planet Tralfamadore describes the poverty of time tunnel vision in Earthlings, only to conclude: “All time is time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take moments for what they are, moments, and soon you will realize that we are all insects trapped in amber. ” The movements through tunnels in this exhibition are also a metaphor for a linear experience of time that, far from any promise of peaceful progress, is a vector of anxiety in the artist in front of the prospect of an irremediably univocal future. The use of ceramic, being a material with a great insulating capacity, underlines this closure, evoking qualities of the watertight, even the hermetic. But pulling the thread of that unearthed imagination, these isolated and insulating clay sculptures also enclose within themselves a deep subsoil time in the very matter from which they are made and the speculation from which they emerge. By tearing and opening these cavities-pieces, the artist seeks to spread in front of us this stagnant time that flees from linearity towards other material ontologies, towards other ostensible imperceptibilities, and perhaps, also, towards another more egalitarian and less violent temporal distribution. In them beats a congregation of temporary powers, without definition or direction because as their name Hermafroditas (Hermaphrodites) (2021) suggests, they are creatures in a state of undifferentiation, of pure (sexual) potency without actualizing or fixing on any denominator; and that, therefore, they contain within themselves all future forms and possibilities.

 

At the heart of this set of sculptures and drawings there is Tuneladora (2021): a sculpture in which a pair of resin fins grow powerful and slender from a muddy outgrowth. The fins (which could also be blades, or oars) are painted from their edge in a gradient from navy blue to white, reminiscent of baroque chromaticism in the way that it underlines the shadows and lights of the piece while emphasizing its speed and movement. They refer to the dolphin and its symbolism that Solar reads in the key of Minoan mythology, where these animals are attributed the ability to guide to a safe harbor; and at the same time, they are covered with the patina of a fair booth that we find in previous projects of the artist. Their polished and dynamic finish contrasts with the heavy and immobile presence of the mud from which they arise; a kind of stump of a missing joint, perhaps belonging to some deep-seated dweller. In fact, the piece invites us to imagine that when it is operated, it has unearthed the cavernous sculptures that surround it: while the group of Hermafroditas shows the emptying, Tuneladora (TBM) presents the positive body that excavates the tunnel gallery. This amalgamation of the geological and shapeless materiality of the mud with the plastic hyper-definition of the fin combines in an unprecedented way two registers present in the artist’s work, the one of the raw and abstract power of the material with the updating vector of fiction, which crystallizes in a language — both symbolic and aesthetic— sharp and precise. As if the speculative grammar of fiction, loaded with all its signs and forms, emerged from the torrent generated by these two helices in the wild and unknown substrate

 

 

Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga

Curator, researcher and educator. She lives and works in Utrecht, where she is curator of the Post-Academic Program at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

 

 

Teresa Solar (Madrid, 1985) studied Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense of Madrid.

 

Some of her most prominent solo shows include “Ride, ride,ride” in Matadero Madrid (2018) and Index Foundation in Stockholm (2019) and “Flotation Line” at DER TANK, Institut Kunst Basel, Switzerland (2018). She has also created solo exhibits in galleries such as “Time of worms” at Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona (2021), “Forms of Fleeing” Travesía Cuatro Gallery, Madrid (2020), “Pumping Station” in Travesía Cuatro CDMX Gallery in Mexico City (2019) and “Ground Control” at Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona (2017).

 

Solar’s work has been recently shown at the Liverpool Biennial 2021 curated by Manuela Moscoso, at the VII international Biennial of Young Art of Moscow (2020) and at the Köln Skulptur Park  #9 curated by Chus Martinez  (2017-2020) . Solar’s projects have been present at groups shows in Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunstverein Munich, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Maxxi Roma, CA2M Madrid, Patio Herreriano Museum Valladolid and Marcelino Botín Foundation Santander, among others. She is currently a finalist of the Future Generation Prize 2021-2022 at Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev.

Estar a la lluna

FONTETA – Bombon · Joan Prats · NoguerasBlanchard

Capítol II: Estar a la lluna (Head in the clouds)

 

Opening: 7th of August, 12am-9pm

Exhibition until 26th of September

c/ Empordà, 10, Fonteta, Girona

 

August: Monday to Sunday, 5-9pm

September: Friday to Sunday, 5-9pm

or by appointment: (+34) 644 524 969

 

 

We’re delighted to present the second chapter of the joint project by Bombon, Galeria Joan Prats and NoguerasBlanchard in Fonteta, a small village in the Emporda region.

 

The exhibition, conceived in two chapters (the first opening June 19th and the second August 7th) brings together artists from three different generations. The proposal begins with a concept from the Emporda Parar la fresca (to take in fresh air) described by Josep Pla in the book “Las Horas”.

 

 

Text by Gabriel Ventura

 

 

“Perhaps because for so many centuries it has been out of reach, it has awakened the most fantastical dreams, those which are most passionate and hidden. Its charm will always be on behalf of the nighttime, of the occult and intuition, of secrecy and excess. The moon -which dilates and dwarfs cat’s eyes, makes tides rise and fall, and inflates and deflates frogs continues to fascinate us with the same fervour of ancient times, even though we have already stepped upon it gingerly, and now some enlightened entrepreneurs plan to build hotels with galactic views. But let’s not fool ourselves: the colonising eagerness of Jeff Bezos and company will not be able to bring closer or make more comprehensible the mysteries of the White Hare or the Spider Woman.

 

Eternally distant, the moon has been worshiped by witches and vampires, by poets and fortune-tellers. As much as science tries to conquer it, the lunar mercurial light projects us towards remote and inscrutable futures, and invites us to reflect on the shadows and myths of the human condition. Throughout history we have linked it to fertility and the unconscious, to death and resurrection, to the repetition of life’s cycles. The first inscribed annotations on artefacts and tools from the Palaeolithic era consist of lunar records. In fact, is very likely that before the advent of agriculture, societies were organised according to a lunar temporal cycle, as demonstrated by Alexander Marshack’s research in The Roots of Civilization.

 

Unlike the sun, the omnipotent and constant star, the moon goes through phases; it waxes and wanes, dwindles, bends, and transforms. For this reason, there has been a historical tendency to represent what is immutable with the sun (God), and that which is changing and material with the moon (for example, Plato’s sublunar and mortal kingdom, the land of doubt and shadows). Inevitably, for millennia, human species has found its counterpart in the drama of the moon: being born, growing up, reproducing (the belly of the full moon), and dying. If the solar syntax divides and ranks –W.B. Yeats accused the sun of offering “complex and contrived” truths– the lunar syntax mixes and confuses the forms by being evasive, emotional, fluid. Symbolically, the moon evokes the imaginative, contingent, and ambiguous world of existence, which contrasts against absolute solar truths shaping an ideal world of being. It is impossible to look directly at the sun, it is impossible to enter into a dialogue with its dazzling presence. The moon, on the other hand, illuminates paths from the brinks of the sky and, in the words of Lorca, shamelessly shows its “one hundred identical faces”. Illusion, delirium, chimera, madness, chaos, dispersion (estar a la lluna 1): the attributes of the queen of the night suggest the transgression of daytime norms.

 

Lilacs and electric blues, striking yellows and raging reds, fluorescent greens that shoot up from the dark, like a scream piercing the conscience. The colours of the night sharpen the nerves as well as the eye; they make us untrusting, and we sense the intermittent heartbeat of danger.

 

A tremor runs down our backs: is it real, what we have seen? Can we believe in the images and words that appear under Selene’s cold light? Perhaps, deep down, being on the moon is one of the most fruitful and perplexing ways to be on Earth -not taking anything for granted, continuing to be suspicious, and looking up at the unfathomable secrets of the universe.

 

Gabriel Ventura

 

 

Capítol I: Parar la fresca (To take in fresh air)

Julia Varela

Visit with the artist on September 2, 18h30. By appointment at galeria@galeriajoanprats.com 

 

As part of artnou, Galeria Joan Prats presents the exhibiion Duress by Julia Varela (Madrid, 1986).

 

In the digital contemporary landscape mediated by technological devices, the perception of images is promoted through their visible condition. This visibility is what gives an image its performative status, the possibility of being and its social and legal recognition. The series of works presented in the exhibition and their historical context will address several issues surrounding this and other topics.

 

Julia Varela is an artist who works on the medium and materiality of images in the age of digital technology. Her research focuses on the states adopted by the irrepressible who resist representation.

The physical form of her work analyses the globalization of industries, technological matter and the concept of visuality. Her work intensifies our physical interaction with devices and their mechanisms, providing an alternative understanding of notions such as context and desire.

Julia has been part of the Critical Images research program in Kungl Konsthögskolan Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and a master’s degree in Art Sculpture from the Royal College of Art London. Her latest exhibitions have taken place at: Centro de Cultura Contemporánea CondeDuque, Madrid; Fundació Suñol, Barcelona; Somerset House, London; Belgrade Cultural Centre BCC, Belgrade; Listost Gallery, Prague; Decad, Berlin; Yamakiwa Gallery, Japan; KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Galleri Mejan, Stockholm; Resartis, Melbourne; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin; CUL DE SAC Gallery, London.

She is currently a resident artist at HANGAR, Centre de producció i recerca d’arts visuals, Barcelona.

 

Fonteta Teresa Solar

FONTETA – Bombon · Joan Prats · NoguerasBlanchard

Capítol I: Parar la fresca (To take in fresh air)

 

Opening: 18th-19th of June. Exhibition until 3rd of August

c/ Empordà, 10, Fonteta, Girona

 

June and September: Friday to Sunday, 5-9pm

July and August: Monday to Sunday, 5-9pm

or by appointment: (+34) 644 524 969

 

Text by Gabriel Ventura.

 

We’re delighted to present a joint project by Bombon, Galeria Joan Prats and NoguerasBlanchard, from June to September, in Fonteta, a small village in the Emporda region.

 

The exhibition, conceived in two chapters (the first opening June 19th and the second August 7th) brings together artists from three different generations. The proposal begins with a concept from the Emporda Parar la fresca (to take in fresh air) described by Josep Pla in the book “Las Horas”.

 

Parar la fresca, as Pla states, is the summer habit of taking a chair out into the street, or up onto a rooftop as the sun begins to fall and simply letting time pass. Parar la fresca has modest intentions, to ignore the heavens, to be blissfully unaware of what the sky offers us whilst sounds flow from the sunset and the summer heat. As Pla argues, there is nothing more pleasurable or kind than falling asleep in the fresh twilight. But what if one does not fall sleep easily?

 

Taking this question as a point of departure, works have been selected by artists addressing topics such as nature, landscape, time, contemplation, and the universe. They have been divided into two moments: Parar la fresca and Estar a la lluna. Two chapters of the same exhibition with artists such as Antoni Tàpies, Ana Mendieta, Joan Brossa, Hernández Pijuan, Rosa Tharrats, Perejaume, Teresa Solar, Jordi Mitjà, Aldo Urbano, Chema Madoz, Mari Eastman, Enric Farrés Duran, Wilfredo Prieto o Juan Uslé… amongst others. In addition, specific actions will be carried out by some of the artists linked to the Emporda.

 

In Pla’s words, “The vast sky dome, they say, invites us to think. That is true. But think about what?” The renowned Emporda author concludes that “people who have a sense of ridicule think, before the heavens, that they know nothing at all.”

 

 

* Capítol II: Estar a la lluna (Head in the clouds)

Lola Lasurt, Javier Peñafiel

Opening 15/5/2021 from 11am to 2pm

 

17/06, 18h30: Visit with the artists. + info

 

From the 15 of May, we shall exhibit the first collaborative exhibition by the artists Lola Lasurt and Javier Peñafiel, titled Desde hace tiempo que nuestras comunicaciones no vienen de un lugar reconocible [It has been a long time since our communications have not come from a recognizable place].

 

 

‘One in one, a transmission line.

 

For a long time, Lola and Javier have been working, imagining, drawing, describing, and reporting choreographies.

 

The fear of being contagious produced a reduction in contact, this fear both reduces and paralyzes at the same time.

 

To imagine co-immunities is a cry for help.

 

This is the point of the exhibition, the moment before the transmission. When the gaps in memory seem less passive, memory shakes them up. The memory of any place does not need the quantum to unfold.

 

We present a phrase/frieze, constructed from various completed works that is not a synthesis but an unfolding.

 

We are not simply one whole.

 

For a period of time Lola choreographed performances under water. Synchronized Swimming. The water has always been a place of choreography for both artists. Javier, personally affected by bone problems, is a disciplined swimmer of aquatic Chi Kung.

 

The conversation between Lola and Javier focuses on repeated figurers, unique ideas, personal dances, theater signs and the insubordination of the contexts.

 

Javier uses a phrase from a long time ago, for the things that are happening in the world, the removal of patrimony, changes, movements, the future. He refers to this step as Desactivo Domicilios (deactivated domiciles), the moment before the explosion, the prevention of the catastrophe, the unwritten chapter.

 

A phrase/ frieze of serial works by Lola and Javier extends over the gallery in form of a choreographed line.

 

Various works and videos accumulate in the main hall, ready for departure, unsure of when and at what speed, nor their exit strategy or shipping protocols.

 

Objects are most enigmatic when they are circulating.

 

‘I still remember when a change of residence meant the transfer of a (telephone) line, and it has been a long time since our communications have not come from a recognizable place.’

 

Ultimately, all transitive.’

 

Lola Lasurt and Javier Peñafiel

 

 

 

 

Lola Lasurt (Barcelona, 1983) lives and works in Barcelona. The gallery has collaborated with her since her individual exhibition Exercici de Ritme which took place in 2014.

 

Graduating in 2005 from Universitat de Barcelona, she completed two Masters in Artistic Productions and Investigation (2009-2010). Lola also trained between 2016 and 2019 at Royal College of Art (RCA). She showed her work at the Biennal d’Art de Valls (2009); Note Book KKKB, Barcelona (2010); Bienal de intervenciones site-specific. Alcontar, Almeria (2011); Auberge Espagnole, Anneessens Palace, Brussels (2013); Red Dawn, HISK, Ghent (2014); Young Belgian Art Prize, Brussels (2015); Foot Foraine, La Villete, Paris (2016); Daybreak, Royal College of Art, London (2017) or Generación 2018, La Casa Encendida, Madrid.

 

Amongst her latest exhibitions stands out Doble Autorització, Espai13, Fundació Miró, Barcelona (2014); Flag Dancing Moves, ornothing, Brussels (2015); Donació, Biblioteca Pública Arús, Barcelona (2016); Emissió Periòdica Definitiva, santcorneliarts(2), Cardedeu (2017) and Joc d’infants, La Capella, Barcelona. Currently her project Cardiograma is being shown at IVAM in Valencia.

 

Lola received an Exchange grant of Hangar and Greatmore Art Studios (2012); a grant of investigation of Sala d’Art jove of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the group Leland Palmer (2012); the Premi Miquel Casablancas, finalist edition mode (2013) and project mode (2015); a research and artistic scholarship of Generalitat de Catalunya (2014); the price Generación 2018, Fundación Montemadrid, La Casa Encendida, Madrid and the third price of the 15th Muestra de Arte Naturgy, MAC, A Coruña (2018).

 

 

 

 

Javier Peñafiel (Zaragoza, 1964). He was living in Barcelona from 1993 until 2020. He has collaborated with the gallery since 2004 presenting his first exhibition with a video called Confianza quería pentrar. In 2008 we showed his work in the exhibition No verbal. Todo escrito and in 2013 the exhibition Latido Antecedente.

 

After studying philosophy, Javier Peñafiel concentrated his work during the 1980s into ambits of system criticism. He formed himself outside of academic structures. In 1994, Manel Clot, curator of La Capella de l’Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu de Barcelona, offered him the opportunity to show his work for the first time at an individual show.

 

Since then, Peñafiel showed is work both at home in Spain and abroad: Conferencia performativa, MUSAC, León (2013); Languages and Aesthetics of Spanish Videos Art: Ten Years of Critical Practices, Videotape, Hong Kong (2015); VÍDEO-RÉGIMEN. Coleccionistas en la era ausdiovisual, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid (2015); Cómo hacer arte con palabras, MUSAC, León (2016); Discursos Premeditats, Centre del Carme, Valencia; Bibliotecas insólitas, La Casa Encendidada, Madrid (2017); Walkabout #01, Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato, Torre-Dangio in Valle di Blenio, Switzerland (2018).

 

Furthermore, Javier Peñafiel has shown his work in individual exhibitions, Puente, continúa, Pabellón Puente, Zaragoza (2013); Egolactante, Sala Anilla, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. Universidad de Chile, Santiago (2014); Pánico Esnob, etHALL, Barcelona (2015); Agència en avenir – No tots visibles res transparent, Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona (2017); ¡Más que pañabras, obras!, Instituto Cervantes, Bordeaux (2019) or Alrededores exentos de adultocentrismo, Casa Solleric, Palma (2020).

Caio Reisewitz

Text by Verónica Stigger (Porto Alegre, 1973), writer, art critic, curator and professor. 

 

3D tour

 

Conversations with Caio Reisewitz & curators. (see below)

 

      

 

From the 11 of March, we shall exhibit Recado da Mata, the fourth exhibition by Caio Reisewitz at Galeria Joan Prats. We present 11 photographs, a video, and an audio piece.

 

Caio Reisewitz has gathered many of the photographs in this exhibition together in response to reading books written by two great thinkers and indigenous leaders working in Brazil today: A queda do céu [The fall of heaven] by Davi Kopenawa with co-authorship from Bruce Albert, and Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo [Ideas to postpone the end of the world] by Ailton Krenak. The title of the exhibition furthermore lends itself from the preface written by anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro for Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s book who in turn alludes to the tale O recado do morro [The Message of the Hill], by Joao Guimarées Rosa. In the story, a homeless man and a hermit warn the people of the region about a message they claim to have received from Morro da Garça (Hill of Garça) itself. In a group of 7 men, one of them will be killed through treason. In the preface Viveiros de Castro begins with the idea of imminent death proclaimed by nature, now it is not from the voice of the hill but through the voice of the jungle. The jungle warns us that it is being exterminated by man; this is the message that Caio Reisewitz attempts to convey in his photographs.

 

One of the most recent works presented in the exhibition by Caio Reisewitz is Ambé, whose title much like the other works displayed (excluding Penedo), refers to a place name of Tupí origin. Ambé is the name of a rural community 80km from the center of Macapá in Amapá. However, in the Amazon region it also means that which is rugged, frizzy and rough. Much like the vast majority of Reisewitz’s works, in this photograph we are unable to distinguish human presence. We see only a thick tangle of branches, trunks and leaves characteristic of the Amazon rainforest. Nevertheless, the inability to distinguish human presence in the jungle does not mean it is uninhabited. The indigenous placename reminds us that for Amerindians the jungle is continuously full of a multiplicity of beings that remain invisible to us (…). By pasting fragments of different photographs, overlaying them, and re-photographing them with colour manipulation, provides the scene with a bluish tint. In Ambé, Reisewitz creates an unreal almost spectral environment; he shows an image of a dream or a vision of a shaman. Despite our inability to see the invisible beings of the jungle we are still able to sense their presence (…).

 

Always concerned about man’s rampant exploitation of nature and its dire consequences, Caio Reisewitz, in photographs such as Tipioca and Upurupã, finds a way to make this message even more eloquent, more visible. He overlaps an image of the jungle with part of the Palácio Del Planalto (the seat of Brazil’s federal executive power) which we glimpse at like a ghost or apparition floating menacingly. We must not ignore that this exhibition takes place at a time when the government is currently under the rule of President Jair Bolsonaro. Jair Bolsonaro is an admitted accomplice to the greatest devastation ever imposed on the Amazon and Pantanal in recent history. Deforestation reached its highest level since 2008. Additionally, there have been repeated attacks against the indigenous population, their territories and their given rights which were stipulated in the 1988 Constitution. In the last two years, several Brazilian cities including those in Southeast and South have been covered by smoke for days dye to forest fires. It is no longer just a message, but a loud cry of help from the jungle.

 

 

 

Caio Reisewitz (São Paulo, 1967) lives and works in São Paulo. He is one of the most important photographers from Brazil; he has focused his work on the difficult relationship between nature and people. Recent individual exhibitions include: Biblioteca, Museo de Antioquia, Colombia (2018); Altamira, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2017); Ingenios de hoy, Photoespaña, Museo de Albacete (2016); Disorder, Maison Europeénne de la Photographie, Paris and Florestas, favelas e falcatruas, Huis Marseille Museum voor Fotografie, Amsterdam (2015); Caio Reisewitz, ICP – International Center of Photography, New York (2014). He has participated in Biennale de l’Image Tangible, Paris (2018); The Guangzhou Image Triennial (2017); Bienal de Curitiba, Brazil (2015 and 2013); Biennial Daegu Photo, South Korea (2014), Project LARA Latin American Roaming Artist, Colombia (2013), Nanjing Biennale (2010), Bienal del Fin del Mundo of Ushuaia, Argentina (2009 and 2007), Venice Biennale (2005) representing Brazil, and in São Paulo Art Biennial (2004). His work has been shown in international arts centers, such as Beijing Minsheng Art Museum; Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; MARCO, Vigo; CAAC, Seville; MUSAC, León; Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Goiás, Goiania; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Bahia; Casa da Imagem, OCA, São Paulo; CCBB, Rio de Janeiro and Grand Palais, Paris; amongst others.

 

Friday, April 30th, 6 pm – Online (in Spanish and Portuguese) via this Link

‘Caio Reisewitz y la crisis ambiental y forestal en el contexto del arte contemporáneo’

Conversation with Paula Alzugaray (editor and independent curator specialised in video art), Orlando Maneschy (professor at UFPA-Federal University of Pará, Amazônia) and Caio Reisewitz (artist)

Approximate duration: 50 minutes

 

Friday, May 7th, 7 pm – Galeria Joan Prats (confirm attendance via galeria@galeriajoanprats.com) and online (in Spanish) via this Link

‘Fotografía contemporánea en el contexto actual y coleccionismo’

Conversation with Caio Reisewitz (artist), Moritz Neumüller (curator and critic specialised in the mediums of photography and digital art) and Alejandro Castellote (curator of photography)

Approximate duration: 50 minutes

 

 

Cabello/Carceller

 

Text on the exhibition by Pablo Martínez’s (Valladolid, 1979. Head of Programs at MACBA, Barcelona)

 

3D tour

 

Podcast Radio web Macba

 

We are pleased to present the third exhibition of Cabello/Carceller at Galeria Joan Prats, entitled I am A Stranger, and I am Moving, in which we show recent works: drawings, installation, video and photographs.

 

The exhibition appears as a chapter of an essay, whose central theme revolves around the video, Movimientos para una manifestación en solitario (Movements for a Solo Demonstration). Alike in structure, the exhibition also addresses various topics in its Notas al pie (footnotes), through drawings and photographs. The exhibition delves into fundamental issues such as the solitude experienced by those who choose to dissent from the lifestyle of the majority, the pressure felt to maintain a belligerent stance that defends freedom of choice and the need to produce entirely the limited vehemence that we often grant ourselves.

 

The title of the exhibition is a quote from David Wojnarowicz’s last conference before he died of AIDS in 1992. It refers to the stranglehold that accompanies the sick body, a despised body that society would prefer to expel. David Wojnarowicz is one of the artists that appears in the drawings and collages of Notas al pie, found in the first room, along with Tórtola Valencia, Pedro Lemebel, Agustina González López and Hélio Oiticica. Cabello/Carceller communicate through the past and present, speaking of those who have questioned the heteronomy of their bodies, who from their dissent, were able to transform disease, rejection and hatred into poetry.

 

This hatred saw Agustina González López shot in Granada, and later forgotten, during the same period as Federico García Lorca. She was defined by ‘social madness’ and suffered persecution and ridicule for her differences. Tórtola Valencia lived her sexuality as openly as time provided her, liberating her body and with it other bodies in search for new forms of physical expression. Pedro Lemebel dared to confront the Chilean dictatorship in the streets, but also the stale sectors of the Marxist left, wary of the revolutionary force of the transvestite, of her questioning of the patriarchal order and its obligatory gender conformity. Also, Hélio Oiticica, an anarcho-artist and a pioneer of relational practices that he chose to load with revolutionary content. He paired the aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde with dancing bodies in the favelas through a festival of colour and free expression, the ‘Parangolés’.

 

The video Movimientos para una manifestación en solitario features a body that becomes a manifestation in itself, a rebellious body that questions identity norms through movements, attitudes, and a way of being that vindicates itself politically. The body is alone but empowered in the awareness that its presence is itself a transformative presence, whose femininity gives it strength while being the cause of its social marginalization. The performer holds a banner that is present in the exhibition and quotes a fragment of a well-known phrase by Baruch Spinoza, ‘Lo que puede un cuerpo’, that opens the door to the philosophical sustenance of affect theory.