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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)

La Transformació Sensible

Fabra i Coats Centre d’art contemporani, Barcelona

19.6 – 23.10.2021

 

Assemble, Patricia Esquivias, Javier Peñafiel & Rita Rakosnik, Julia Ramírez-Blanco & Paula García-Masedo.

 

Projecte a cura d’Oriol Fontdevila

 

 

La bellesa és un servei públic? Un dret social? Quin valor polític té la bellesa en el moment actual?

 

La transformació sensible es pregunta pel rol que exerceix la bellesa en el marc de les pràctiques artístiques i socials, i presenta diferents propostes amb què podem cohabitar la bellesa i fer-nos-la nostra com a pràctica vital.

 

Contràriament a la idea que es tracta d’una qüestió de gust individual o d’estetització de sistemes socials i de pensament, en aquest projecte la bellesa és entesa com a principi organitzatiu i com a força motriu de coneixement. La bellesa forma part de la naturalesa de les coses: no és als ulls de qui la mira, sinó que busca alterar per complet la percepció, i per tant conté implícitament un procés de mobilització social i polític.

 

La bellesa és una disposició que assegura la vida en comú amb espècies i agents de diferents tipus, però alhora és un atemptat contra qualsevol presumpció d’independència. El plaer sensual propicia el contacte entre els cossos. Aquesta és la via per la qual accedim i ens relacionem amb l’alteritat, encara que això ens faci irremeiablement dependents i, per tant, vulnerables: una vegada s’ha despertat el desig cap a l’altre, no hi ha autonomia que valgui.

 

El poeta i dramaturg Friedrich Schiller va proporcionar a la bellesa una primera significació política: tot i que el pensament il·lustrat l’havia deixat al marge, Schiller va assenyalar la bellesa com un component que és indispensable per a l’emancipació social enfront de l’escenari de terror en què va degenerar la Revolució francesa. Amb les Cartes sobre l’educació estètica de l’home (1795), la seva proposta es va concretar en una idealització de la bellesa, la qual el poeta emplaçava en un punt de sincronització perfecte entre l’acció dels sentits i la de l’enteniment.

 

Amb La transformació sensible, seguim pensant la bellesa com a condició necessària per a la consecució d’un món comú, malgrat que la síntesi schilleriana ja no s’estima avui en dia plausible: la bellesa facilita l’acció col·lectiva en tant que la desdobla, és un multiplicador de la libido, de l’energia afectiva, així com inclús de les possibilitats cognitives. Una política del comú haurà de reconèixer la bellesa en la mesura que és base material i un actor indispensable per a la vida, però sense que s’hagi de procedir, per aquesta raó, a la seva captura segons una forma de l’enteniment o ni tan sols una estètica política. Una política del comú ha de garantir, contràriament, la multiplicació exponencial dels modes de bellesa i, així, fer-ho també amb els d’existència.

 

 

COHABITAR LA BELLESA

 

Seminari conduït per Oriol Fontdevila amb la col·laboració dels artistes de La transformació sensible i Núria Güell.

 

28 setembre, 2021 – 17:00 Amb Núria Güell i Patrícia Esquivias.

 

29 setembre, 2021 – 17:00 Amb Amica Dall (Assemble) i Julia Ramírez-Blanco & Paula García-Masedo.

 

30 setembre, 2021 – 17:00 Amb Javier Peñafiel & Rita Rakosnik.

 

Activitat gratuïta, amb inscripció prèvia a: activitats-centredart@bcn.cat

 

+ info

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).

Del dimarts 21 de juliol al 27 de setembre de 2020

 

L’exposició Joc d’infants de Lola Lasurt parteix de la retrospectiva Miró. Barcelona 1968-69, la primera mostra d’art contemporani presentada a La Capella. A través d’una nova sèrie de pintures, fotografies, vídeos i ceràmiques, Lasurt aborda l’agitació sociopolítica de finals de la dècada de 1960 tot apropiant-se d’imatges relacionades amb la infantesa publicades a la premsa nacional durant els tres mesos de l’estat d’excepció que es va declarar pocs dies després que acabés l’exposició de Miró. Lasurt relaciona així dues formes de transició: un període d’excepció tant des del punt de vista del desenvolupament polític com personal. El títol remet a l’obra dels Ballets russes de Monte-Carlo Jeux d’enfants, composta per Boris Kochno, amb decorat i vestuari de Miró, i inaugurada al Liceu l’any 1933.

 

+ info

 

Acció. Una història provisional dels 90.

 

MACBA. Exposició col·lectiva. Del 10 de juliol de 2020 al 7 de febrer de 2021

 

Si la dècada de 1980 va representar a Europa un retorn a l’ordre, a la reivindicació d’una certa formalitat en l’art, als formats convencionals de la pintura i l’escultura àmpliament acceptats pel mercat, la de 1990 va reprendre bona part de les experiències conceptuals de dècades anteriors. D’aquesta manera, es van recuperar pràctiques relacionades amb el cos humà que conjuntament anomenem art d’acció. A l’Estat espanyol, aquestes pràctiques encara van tenir més rellevància, amb iniciatives múltiples que han exercit un immens impacte en l’art fins avui dia. Sovint aquest art d’acció s’expressava en forma de performances ‒que acostumaven a circular en àmbits molt restringits, en festivals o trobades‒ i la seva expressió més heterogènia, el que anomenem performativitat.

 

A través de diversos nodes, Acció recorrerà aquesta època i en rastrejarà algunes de les obres fonamentals. A més, inclourà documentació i material audiovisual majoritàriament inèdit que recupera aquelles experiències. El resultat és una exposició densa, amb múltiples extensions històriques i contemporànies, que ajudarà a interpretar d’una manera molt més precisa l’art del nostre temps.

 

Exposició comissariada per Ferran Barenblit, amb obres de Cabello/Carceller, entre d’altres.

 

+ info

45. I tu ni te'n vas adonar, 2019

Opening Thursday, June 25, 5-8pm
Exhibition 25/06 – 17/10/2020

 

Visit by appointment only using Form.
(T. 93 216 02 84 – galeria@galeriajoanprats.com)

Joan Prats Warehouse. Passatge Saladrigas, 5 Barcelona.

 

 

As part of Artnou, Galeria Joan Prats presents the exhibition ‘El retorn a Ripollet’ by Marcel Rubio Juliana (Barcelona, 1991), that brings together a wide range of works, made between 2018 and 2019.

 

Marcel Rubio Juliana expresses himself mainly through drawing and painting, although his approach to creation has to do with the literary essay. Large charcoal canvases and oil miniatures confer the rhythm of a fragmented story that develops an apparently linear story, with unity of time and place. We could see certain analogies with the “nouveau roman”, where different points of view are adopted away from the narrator’s unique vision and where the writing itself acquires autonomy regardless of what is written. The Dogma film script could be another reference: both use real locations, flee from superfluous effects and seek a crude realism, creating a series of rules to follow and, sometimes, to transgress.

 

Alluding to his own experiences and desires, the artist evokes a summer day in which an stranger unknowingly becomes the main character of a singular story. Located in a coastal city near Barcelona, different sequences invite us on a journey in which, following a phenomenological method, contemplation, drift and falling in love offer a precise description of the environment.

 

The narration follows in the footsteps of a young man, from the train station to the city center, passing by the beach, the Yacht Club and various shopping streets, creating a cinematographic record of the places evoked. It also shows us bodies enjoying the water, the view of the sun over the sea, a kiosk, the facade of a theater, stains of humidity on the wall, a flower, a group of friends on a bar´s terrace… everything is there, present in the memory, although everything could be imagined.

 

 

Marcel Rubio Juliana (Barcelona, 1991) studied at Pau Gargallo School of Art and Design (Badalona), where he graduated in 2007. He later studied the Fine Arts degree at the University of Barcelona, which he completed in 2013.

 

Since then, he has shown his work in the following exhibitions: Surfeit, Fundación Arranz-Bravo, l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona (2018); Swab Art Fair, Barcelona, represented by Passatge Studio gallery (2016); The muscles of Zarathustra (with the writer Victor Balcells Matas), Passatge Studio, Barcelona (2016); Pasajes, La Puntual de Mercantic, Sant Cugat, Barcelona (2016); Carles Boïges, cycle of exhibitions, with the collaboration of Tom Carr and his team, TCTeamWork, Badalona (2014); University of Fine Arts, Barcelona (2014); Drawing the night (group exhibition), Anquin Gallery, Reus, Tarragona (2014).

 

He has been nominated for different awards: Bienal Torres Garcia, Mataró, with the work Spectro, 2016; Ynglada-Guillot Foundation, with the drawing Geschlagen, 2015, exhibited at Espai Volart, Barcelona; Drawing Prize of the Güell Foundation, exhibited in Palau Güell, Barcelona, 2015-16; Art Biennial : Tapiró Painting Prize with the drawing What time is it?, 2013.

 

In 2021 he will present an exhibition at Espai 13 of the Miró Foundation, in a cycle curated by Pere Llobera.

Festival de videocreació (amb projeccions, videoinstal·lacions, actuacions i col·loquis)

Santa Mònica, Barcelona

10.12.2019 – 05.01.2020

 

 

Catorzena edició del festival de vídeo d’autor FLUX, caracteritzat des dels seus inicis per focalitzar el protagonisme en els autors vinculats a la ciutat de Barcelona que treballen en el camp del vídeo de creació (videoart, documental de creació, videoinstal·lacions, etc.).

 

Presentem la videoinstal·lació col·lectiva FLUX VIDEOCAPSA, on s’experimenta amb formats alternatius d’exhibició de les obres videogràfiques, integrada per vídeos inèdits dels autors Paula Ábalos, Marina Barsy Janer & Isil Sol Vil, Rosó Cusó, Jesús Etxart, Aurora Gasull, Gonzalo Marcuzzi, Xavi Moreno, Jaume Parera, Javier Peñafiel i Pere Portabella.

 

+ info

Annika Kahrs

Opening: 14.11.2019 from 18 to 21h

Exhibition: 20 and 21.11.2019 from 11 a 20h and till 30.11.2019 by appointment (t. 932160290 o galeria@galeriajoanprats.com)

Venue: Joan Prats Warehouse. Passatge Saladrigas, 5 Barcelona. Metro Poblenou

 

 

With motive of the Loop Festival, we present in our venue Joan Prats Warehouse a selection of recent videos and a sound installation by our artists Alicia Kopf, Annika Kahrs and Teresa Solar which link stories or personal reflections with the space exploration, technology and science.

 

The exhibition title, 26 thousand light years, refers to the distance that separates us from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a supermassive black hole located in the center of the Milky Way, the observation of which seems to confirm that black holes grow by absorbing minor ones and stars. The scientific speculation towards the outer space often approaches science fiction, as it appears in the works we present.

 

Alicia Kopf’s video Speculative Intimacy: An Understanding Of Control, 2019, suggests an emotional science fiction perspective in order to originate new stories about the interaction between bodies, human and non-human. The movie takes place in a near future where the borders between public and private have disappeared, the lives pass in continuous exposition. Michelle, its main character, investigates a concept in crisis: ¿What is intimacy? and talks about this topic with his non-human partner.

 

Annika Kahrs presents two works. The video solid surface, with hills, valleys, craters and other topographic features, primarily made of ice, 2014, shows a planetary where a starry sky is projected, at the center of which appears a circular light which would appear to be the moon, but it turns out to be a focus. In this work from 2014, the artist uses picture and narrative to make a portrait of Pluto, the vision of which was about to change, since New Horizons, an unmanned mission from NASA, was headed to its orbit. Finally it overflied it on July 14th, 2015, and could, for the first time, photograph it closely. Until then, the scientific illustrations about the planet were based on speculation.

 

The other work by Annika Kahrs is the sound installation think about two black holes colliding, then brush your teeth and go to bed, 2019. This work in two parts is a sound installation exploring gravitational waves and their detection. In 2015, the first direct observation of gravitational waves was announced by LIGO. This moment was a record of the collision of two black holes. In the first part of her installation, using a toothbrush as an instrument Kahrs has recreated the sound of their detection alongside audio data courtesy LIGO. For the second part, Kahrs has recorded interviews between Dr. Keith Thorne of LIGO and contributors from different fields.

 

In Teresa Solar’s video Ground Control, 2017, the artist transforms herself into the clay ball that turns on the potter’s wheel. The image of the turning body is accompanied with fragmented stories that connect the accident of the space shuttle Columbia, exploding into pieces due to a failure in its protective shield, with the personal injuries suffered by the artist herself. The title Ground Control has a double meaning: it is a direct reference to the material, ground or clay, and the pressure exerted on it when working on the potter’s wheel and it also refers to the operations center from which the development of a spaceship is monitored. Through the title, this minimal communication experience and conflictual balance between subject and subject matter increases in scale, linking with space travel.

 

 

Alicia Kopf (Girona, 1982) lives and works in Barcelona. Her work reflects on apparently individual issues that have become generational concerns. The expressive dimension of her work is related to her studies in Fine Arts Literature Theory and Comparative Literature. She has exhibited in museums and art centers such as Accademia Di Spagna, Rome (2019), MAC La Coruña in the 15th Naturgy art exhibition (2018); Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Mazcul, Maracaibo (2017); CCCB, Barcelona, Museum of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia (2015); Goethe Institute, La Capella and MACBA, Barcelona (2014); Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona (2013); Bòlit La Rambla, Gerona (2011) or CaixaForum, Barcelona (2009). Recently, she has exhibited in Azkuna Centroa, Bilbao, drawings of the series ‘Conquest drawings’, within the exhibition ‘Nunca real/Siempre verdadero’ curated by Iván de la Nuez. As a novelist, her most important work is ‘Brother in ice’, published in 2015, with which she won the Documenta Prize 2015, the 2016 Llibreter Prize, the 2016 Ojo Crítico Award and the Cálamo Otra Mirada 2017.

 

 

Annika Kahrs (Achim, Germany, 1984) lives and works in Hamburg. She has been awarded a number of prizes and scholarships including the Max-Pechstein-Förderpreis–Stipendium, of Zwickau, in 2019 and 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 Kunstverein of Kassel (2018), Kunsthalle Lingen (2017), Cité International des Arts (2016), 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).

 

Teresa Solar (Madrid, 1985) lives and works in Madrid.  She has been a resident and visiting professor in the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste from Stuttgart (2016), finalist in the Award Cervezas Alhambra de Arte Emergente (ARCOmadrid 2017) and of the program for mentors Fundación Rolex (2016), she received the production scholarship of Fundación Botín (2014), of CAM (2011) and the award Generaciones (2012). Currently she presents in Index, Stockholm Ride Ride Ride, an individual exhibition that had been in Matadero (Madrid) with the title Cabalga, Cabalga, Cabalga. She has recently shown Flotation Line at Der Tank, Basel (June 2018) and in the program Compositions of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend (September, 2018) and has been part of the 2018 expedition “The Current” organized by TBA21-Academy. She has exhibited individually at La Panera Lleida (2016), Matadero Madrid (2014) and CA2M Móstoles (2012) and has participated in collective exhibitions at Haus der Kunst, Munich (March, 2018), at Kunstverein Braunschweig (June, 2018) , in the section “El futuro no es lo que va a pasar, sinóo lo que vamos a hacer” to ARCOmadrid (February 2018), at Kunstverein München, Munich (2017), the Fundación Marcelino Botín Foundation, Santander (2016) and Macro, Roma (2015), among others.

Erick Beltrán Captots - BCN gallery Weekend

Itinerant performance

10 – 13 Oct 2019

 

Barcelona Gallery Weekend

COMPOSICIONS

Comisariado por / curated by

Juan Canela

 

10, 11, 12 Oct: 12-14h (Eixample, Pl. Universitat, Pl. Catalunya) – 17-20h (Ciutat Vella, Parc de la Ciutadella)

13 Oct: 11-14h (Eixample, Pl. Universitat, Pl. Catalunya)

 

visitas guiadas:

10 oct: 12-14h Hotel Sir Victor – Passatge Mercader.

11 oct : 12h Bolsa de Barcelona Passeig de Gràcia 19

12 oct: 17h30 Edifici UB, plaça Universitat

13 oct: 12h Bolsa de Barcelona Passeig de Gràcia 19

 

ESP

En 1507 el barbero Joerg Schan condensa la tradición del personaje de “ninguno” o “nadie” en un panfleto repartido en las calles de Estrasburgo que decía: “Nadie es mi nombre, soporto la culpa de Todos”. Este personaje aparece como sobrenombre del responsable de los trastos rotos y herramientas perdidas en la casa, del tonto del pueblo, o del vendedor de mercachifles y trucos. Pero también de aquel que no se muerde la lengua para hacer críticas, de quien se enfrenta a un poder que ve transitorio o de quien ve el alma de las cosas.

Erick Beltrán recupera estas dos figuras – ninguno y alguno – para crear un cabezudo que distribuye un periódico con distintos análisis sobre la especulación en la ciudad de Barcelona, cuyas páginas recogen un ensayo visual sobre cómo este tipo de prácticas especulativas definen el territorio, los objetos, los sujetos, o las pertenencias. Los personajes recorren distintas zonas de la ciudad repartiendo los periódicos e interactuando con turistas y residentes.

 

ENG

In 1507 the barber Joerg Schan condensed the tradition of the character of “none” or “no one” in a pamphlet distributed in the streets of Strasbourg that said: “No one is my name, I bear everyone’s guilt”. This character appears as the nickname of the person responsible for the broken things and tools lost in the house, of the fool, or of the peddler who sells trinkets and tricks. But also of the one who does not bite his tongue to make criticisms, of the one who faces a power that sees transitory or of the one who perceives the soul of things.

Erick Beltrán recovers these two figures – none and some – to create a bigheaded character that distributes a newspaper with different analyses of speculation in the city of Barcelona, whose pages include a visual essay on how this type of speculative practice defines territory, objects, subjects or belongings. The characters travel through different areas of the city distributing newspapers and interacting with tourists and residents.

 

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Fernando Prats UPF Pompeu Fabra Ciutadella

Inauguració dimarts 4 de juny, 20h.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Sala de graus Albert Calsamiglia (campus Ciutadella de la UPF)

 

A les Lliçons Haas 2019, dedicades al tema: “Ombres i miralls”, la UPF presenta l’obra titulada: He aquí las espaldas del que me ve, 2000 – 2019, de l’artista xilè Fernando Prats. L’obra i el pensament d’Antoni Tàpies han estat un referent molt significatiu en la trajectòria de Prats i amb aquesta instal·lació, es vol establir un intens diàleg entre els dos artistes.

 

Obra visible fins al 17/06/2019, amb cita prèvia.

 

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Antoni Muntadas

Macba, Barcelona

Exposición permanente

 

On Subjectivity, obra de Antoni Muntadas, presente en la exposición Un siglo breve: colección Macba.

Esta nueva muestra presenta un recorrido cronológico a través de la Colección MACBA desde 1929 hasta el presente. En 1929 Barcelona acogió la Exposición Universal, para la que Mies van der Rohe diseñó el Pabellón Alemán o Pabellón Barcelona junto con Lilly Reich. Por iniciativa de Josep Lluís Sert y Josep Torres i Clavé, se fundó el GATCPAC (Grupo de Arquitectos y Técnicos Catalanes para el Progreso de la Arquitectura Contemporánea). André Breton escribió el Segundo manifiesto surrealista y, en París, un grupo de artistas abstractos, liderados por Joaquín Torres-García y Michel Seuphor, fundó Cercle et Carré. Aquel mismo año se inauguró el Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York (MoMA) y Virginia Woolf publicó su ensayo feminista Una habitación propia. 

 

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Pablo del Pozo

Badajoz, 1994

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

The works by Pablo del Pozo have a strong autobiographical character, linked to the experiences of the artist. The feeling of belonging to a place, displacement and nostalgia are subjects that concern him. From the characteristics of the materials used (clay, plaster, pigments and also found objects), he seeks to talk about the precariousness of life, thus generating a reflection on the daily reality.

Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona

4.12.2018, 19h

 

Presentació del nou llibre de Perejaume,  Treure una marededéu a ballar, i de les reedicions d’Obreda i Pagèsiques, a càrrec dels editors Jordi Cornudella Martorell (Edicions 62) i Joan Tarrida (Galaxia Gutenberg), del doctor en filosofia i catedràtic d’estètica Amador Vega Esquerra, i de l’artista i poeta Perejaume. L’acte conclourà amb una intervenció musical a càrrec de Neus Borrell i Miquel Escuer.

 

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habitacio Pedro G Romero

Sales d’art modern del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

14.12.2018 – 3.2.2019

 

Comissariat:

Ángel Calvo Ulloa i Nuria Enguita

 

Projectes d’artista: un projecte d’Archivo F.X. amb Pedro G. Romero i la col·laboració de Lola Lasurt, Patricia Gómez & María Jesus González i Álvaro Perdices.

 

A les sales dedicades a la Guerra Civil, a la col·lecció d’art modern, s’exposaran els treballs d’Archivo F. X. al voltant de les anomenades txeques psicotècniques d’Alphonse Laurencic instal·lades als temples dels carrers Vallmajor i Zaragoza de Barcelona i al convent de Santa Úrsula de València entre 1937 i 1939.

 

La instal·lació inclourà material documental, fotografies, films i bibliografia que n’expliquen la funció i el significat.

 

Habitació és el fruit de la col·laboració de tres institucions afins que aborden el pensament crític actual des de diferents posicionaments: el CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo de la Comunitat de Madrid, el Centre Cultural La Nau de la Universitat de València i el Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

 

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Caixaforum, Barcelona

19.7 – 21.10.2018

 

 

 

Al llarg de la història els artistes s’han demanat de què és capaç l’art. Aquesta exploració de la potència de l’art com a eina transformadora segueix vigent avui dia. Els artistes treballen amb representacions de la realitat que, de manera més o menys poètica, manifesten la seva visió sobre la vida que els envolta, i generen obres amb el poder d’una turbulència, és a dir, com un detonant capaç d’obrir els ulls de la societat davant de realitats desconegudes.

 

La mostra presenta vint artistes de generacions, cosmovisions i maneres de fer diferents, com a reflex de la diversitat de la Col·lecció “la Caixa” d’Art Contemporani, reunida al llarg de més de trenta anys, amb l’objectiu de promoure la crítica, el debat i la reflexió activa sobre el món que vivim i construïm.

Comissària Nimfa Bisbe

 

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Fabra i Coats – Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona

4.5 – 22.7.2018

 

A Sense of Wonder és una proposta expositiva que reuneix els projectes més recents de l’artista Carles Congost. Es tracta de treballs en vídeo que es poden interpretar individualment però que mantenen moltes connexions temàtiques habituals en la seva pràctica artística (la música, el món de l’art, la cultura pop…) o en la manera de formalitzar-la (l’acurada posada en escena i el sentit de l’humor). En relació amb la seva trajectòria, es constata una sensible evolució en l’articulació dels elements que utilitza i una major atenció al propi llenguatge cinematogràfic. Perviu, per damunt de tot, la capacitat d’utilitzar aspectes propers, quotidians i sovint associats a subgèneres, per fer-los servir de punt de partida i abordar –sense grandiloqüència ni subratllats– aspectes més centrals i genèrics de la condició humana. L’autor ens proposa fer ús d’una sèrie de referents que ens pertanyen per transcendir-los i veure fins a quin punt ens representen o ens expliquen millor del que ens imaginàvem.

 

A Sense of Wonder és un projecte generat a partir d’una coproducció entre el Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani. Girona i el Centre d’Art la Panera de Lleida, que al Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – Fabra i Coats es completa amb vídeos inèdits i una creació específica per a l’ocasió. Un total de vuit obres avalades per una bona acollida del públic i per distincions com la segona edició del Premi de Videocreació (impulsat per LOOP Barcelona, la Xarxa de Centres d’Arts Visuals de Catalunya i l’Arts Santa Mònica) o una beca de la Fundación Botín, a més de la presència en escenaris internacionals com la Manifesta 11 –celebrada a la ciutat de Zuric, l’any 2016– o la sala Komplot de Brussel·les.

 

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Arts Santa Monica

Espai Residència, Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona

20.06 – 23.07.2017

 

Invertint l’exhibicionisme de la mostra personal, “Agència en avenir” planteja un exercici de recuperació i d’agençament del treball de Javier Peñafiel, en què assaig i biografia s’hibriden, centrant l’atenció en els característics «enigmes» que l’habiten. A través d’aquestes frases, radicals en la seva ambigüitat i que amaguen autèntics assajos crítics sobre la contemporaneïtat, l’exposició reflexiona sobre l’avenir que ens ocupa.

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Muntadas Loop

Friday 26 May 2017, 11:15 —12.:30

Loop, Barcelona

 

In the words of Niels van Tomme

What have we learned from Muntadas? After having had the honour to experience a body of work that has grown expansively throughout a more than four decades long career devoted to detecting and decoding the mechanisms of control and power through which hegemonic ways of perception are constructed, what is it that makes us return time and time again to the politically apt works of Muntadas?

There is an old-age idiom that goes “seeing is believing”, but if there is one thing to be absorbed from Muntadas’ insightful practice, it is the fact that seeing can never be straightforwardly aligned with believing. For Muntadas the media-saturated ways in which we experience the world are always already ideologically, politically and socially coded. In order to see properly we need a proper “translation”, a moment that allows the passive stance of seeing to transform into the more active act of knowing, which is the becoming aware of the very mechanisms of mediation itself. These are the tools Muntadas’ multidimensional media practice provides. “Warning: Perception Requires Involvement” goes the artist’s well-known 1999 slogan, thereby highlighting the multifaceted relationships between seeing, transcribing, perceiving and knowing, which are key to understanding his work. We cannot think the world without acting within, and becoming actively part of that world. And so Muntadas’ practice, besides offering a constructive way in which to perceive the media fabric around us, primarily makes us involved and active participants within the reality that surrounds us.

Muntadas’ early video works shift impressively from merely documentation of ‘actions’ towards a more complex investigation of the medium’s intrinsic political and ideological framings. Even though the work often looks scientifically detached, the emphasis lies not in following the protocols of documentary media production, but on forging new ways of seeing. It is a seeing that makes us aware of the intricate ways in which media filter and reshape the events we watch, or, conversely, how we are shaped by the manifold mediations that persistently take place right before our eyes. Once you see this, there is no way to unsee it.

 

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Through ceramic sculptures, videos and photographs, the artist outlines a discontinuous narration, starting from her own body and linked to space exploration. Precisely, the works of the exhibition revolve around the relationship of the artist’s body with her work materials, essentially the ceramics. Through the performative link and the double meaning between subject and material, between structure and mass, Teresa Solar reflects on concepts such as control, resistance, a definitely precarious balance of sense and accident.

 

The title of the exhibition, Ground Control, has a double meaning. On one hand it is a direct reference to the material, ground or clay, and the pressure exerted on it when working on the potter’s wheel. The body of the artist adopts a position of resistance to control the material, which is plastic and dynamic, this effort makes the body operate as a static structure, as an object, as matter. Through the title, this minimal experience of communication and conflicting balance between subject and matter increases in scale, linking with space travel: “Ground Control” is the center of operations from which the operation of the flight of a spacecraft is monitored. Serving the two for the purpose of a successful expedition, one cannot exist without the other and vice versa, they are part of the same mechanism, a single subject divided into two bodies.

 

The idea of tense balance between oneself and the world is present in the videos of the exhibition. In Being a person you did not know you were, we see a puppet that adopts the role of the divided adult, of an unknown entity who is born in us and who looks at us from the outside, who turns us in foreigners inside our body. Continuing with the idea of the divided subject, in the video Ground control, the artist is transformed into the clay ball that turns on the potter’s wheel. The image of the turning body is accompanied with fragmented stories that connect the accident of the space shuttle Columbia, exploding into pieces due to a failure in its protective shield, with the personal injuries suffered by the artist herself.

 

This double relationship is also present in the sculptures of the series Crushed by pressure. The pressure of the metal bars and cords repeats the process of creation of the ceramics, remembering the pile of rubble of an accident, in which the ceramic becomes the body of the subject, controlled and stabilized through structures that deform it. Ceramics allow us to emphasize the contrast between the primitivism of a material and a millenary technique, with the technological sophistication of the ceramic skins that cover the rockets.

 

In the pieces Pie de foto: Masa and Chamber, Breath, the artist in the potter’s Wheel sign language on White clay balls, creating words that are then compacted and deformed by their own weight, forming a language that exists in the phisical space. In Pie de foto: Masa, ceramic columns hold the photograph of a bone while the engraved stretch marks themselves mean “mass”; the missing body is completed trough the text that supports it.

 

 

Teresa Solar Abboud (Madrid, 1985) lives and works in Madrid. She has been a resident and visiting professor at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart (2016), she was a finalist of the Rolex Mentorship Program (2016), she received the production grant Fundación Botín (2014), the production grant CAM (2011) and the prize Generaciones (2012). She has individually exhibited at La Panera Lleida (2016), Matadero Madrid (2014) & CA2M Móstoles (2012). Recently she has been selected as finalist for the Prize Cervezas Alhambra of Emergent Art during ARCOmadrid 2017. She will show soon at Haus der Kunst and at Kunstverein München.

 

Alfons Borrell

We are pleased to announce Alfons Borrell’s new exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats, next Thursday December 15th.

 

After the exhibition dedicated to him by Fundació Miró, which gathered sixty years of artistic practice, we present the most recent work of this exceptional creator, who conceives painting as a space of relationship with the world and, at the same time, as an impulse, an emotion and that has stayed away of the tendencies and the prevailing movements throughout his trajectory.

 

His work is characterized by the importance of color and debate between subtlety and intensity, between openness to nature and introspective recollection. Bound since 1955 to the language of abstraction, he has been influenced in different moments of his life by Anglada Camarasa and Brossa, two artists who, beyond an aesthetic, provided him a vital and ethical attitude towards art. Borrell’s work has been and is currently intense and constant, always moving in parameters that he repeats with rigor and dedication.

 

The color in Alfons Borrell’s work is an invading agent that moves and fluctuates; the artist defines it as an extension of the person, which blends you with the environment, “if you walk through a forest full of fir trees you turn green, if you could immerse yourself in the sea you would get out blue… ” He says” I would like to be painting “. It is a vision of color and painting, linked to the concept, to the thought, and also to the experience. Borrell uses only five pigments extracted from the earth, green, blue, orange, ocher and gray; while white, from the surface of the canvas, emerges as an apparition of light.

 

To this work of color, which he has been using repeatedly for its symbolic connotations, the perception of presences and absences, from a particular experience of limits, is added. In his paintings, vertical lines cross the surface symbolically designating a presence, horizontal lines refer to the horizon, and the inability to contain color matter, which sometimes overflows marked margins, shows us the experience of the unlimited.

 

Borrell’s work needs an active contemplation on the part of the viewer, who establishes a relation of tension with the works. Their experimentation does not depend on codes of interpretation or previous knowledge, but his painting seems to go directly to the observers, interpellating them, but always leaving a space of freedom as a possibility to inhabit its language.

 

Alfons Borrell (Barcelona, 1931) lives and works in Sabadell. After an initial stage of formation in figurative painting, he got started in abstraction in 1955, with works close to informalism. Far removed from the academic art, he was part of Grup Gallot, an iconoclast and revolutionary group linked to gestural abstraction. This radical experience allowed him to find his own way, of sobriety and silence, throughout the 60’s. From 1976, he began to title his works with the exact date of its completion, like a journal, the same year that he participated in the group show Pintura 1, in the recently inaugurated Fundació Joan Miró of Barcelona, where he would return with a solo show two years later and, in 2015, with a great retrospective. Among the recent years’ exhibitions, stand the one held in 2006 at Centre Cultural Santa Tecla, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, which traveled to Museu de Sabadell, the one about work on paper held in 2011 at Fundació Palau de Caldes d’Estrac and the one held the same year at Fundació Vila Casas. He has participated in group shows at MNAC, Centre Cultural Tecla Sala, MACBA, CCCB and Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Flanders Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. In 2014 he received the GAC prize, an honorary award in recognition of his long career.

Carles Congost, A Sense of Wonder. Bòlit Girona.

 

A sense of wonder

Comisario: David Santaeulària

Del 27 de enero al 30 de abril de 2017

Bòlit La Rambla, Sala Fidel Aguilar y Bòlit St Nicolau

 

A sense of wonder (un sentido de la maravilla o la capacidad de maravillarse) es una propuesta expositiva que reúne los trabajos más recientes del artista Carles Congost. Se trata de una coproducción entre el Bòlit, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo. Girona y el Centro de Arte La Panera, Lleida, donde se podrá ver del 18 de mayo al 15 de octubre de 2017. Se presentan cuatro trabajos en vídeo que se pueden interpretar individualmente pero que mantienen muchas conexiones temáticas habituales en la su práctica artística (la música, el mundo del arte, la cultura pop…) o en el modo de formalizarlo (la cuidada puesta en escena y el sentido del humor). En relación con su trayectoria, se constata una sensible evolución en la articulación de los elementos que utiliza y una mayor atención al propio lenguaje cinematográfico. Pervive, por encima de todo, la capacidad de utilizar aspectos cercanos, cotidianos y a menudo asociados a subgéneros, para hacerlos servir de punto de partida y abordar -sin grandilocuencia ni subrayados- aspectos más centrales y genéricos de la condición humana. El autor utiliza una serie de referentes que nos pertenecen para trascenderlos y ver hasta qué punto nos representan o nos explican mejor de lo que imaginábamos. Nos propone, en definitiva, una capacidad de maravillarnos.

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Bryce, colección Hochschild

Sala Alcalá 31.

Del 21 de febrero al 16 de abril de 2017.

La exposición presenta una amplia selección de la colección Hochschild, una de las principales de Perú y la única que, hasta el momento, se ha dedicado casi en exclusiva a la producción artística moderna y contemporánea del país andino.

“Próxima parada: artistas peruanos en la colección Hochschild” reúne obra de un conjunto de alrededor de cuarenta artistas y ofrece una visión representativa de los fondos de esta colección privada, así como de las creaciones de los artistas peruanos contemporáneos.

Esta muestra sobre la colección Hochschild representa una oportunidad inmejorable para comprender el arte de las últimas décadas de Perú, un país cuya cultura incaica o barroca es bien conocida internacionalmente, pero no así su arte más contemporáneo.

La exposición está compuesta por obras realizadas sobre distintos soportes, desde pinturas, esculturas, dibujos y fotografías hasta videoproyecciones, instalaciones y proyectos multidisciplinarios de diferentes corrientes artísticas; desde el surrealismo hasta la abstracción geométrica, pasando por el arte popular o el informalismo. Entre los artistas que conforman la muestra se encuentran algunas figuras reconocidas internacionalmente como Milagros de la Torre, Martín Chambi, Fernando Bryce, Sandra Gamarra o Mario Testino junto a nombres más desconocidos para el público español como José Carlos Martinat, Maya Watanabe, Eduardo Moll o Giancarlo Scaglia.

Sin duda, la colección Hochschild representa un empeño personal por ser parte del esfuerzo de conservadores de museos, curadores, galerías, críticos, académicos y artistas peruanos que están contribuyendo a hacer del arte del Perú nuestra “próxima parada”.

 

Comisario: Octavio Zaya
Organiza: Oficina de Cultura y Turismo de la Comunidad de Madrid

 

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Firing Squad Wall, 2012

Rosario, Argentina, 1963

Lives and works in New York

 

 

Fabian Marcaccio is one of the pioneers of digital painting. Attempting to redefine the pictorial genre, his work extends the temporal and spatial parameters, and tracks the integration of the hand-made and the machine-made.

 

In the nineties, he worked with composition and digital printing and, later on 3D printing, to create pictorial works that he calls Paintants, a neologism from painting and mutant. Marcaccio considers painting as a constellation of changing content, sometimes rendered as panels, sometimes as 3D configurations, sometimes as animations, and sometimes on an environmental scale.

Biblioteca Arus, 2016. Lola Lasurt

Barcelona, 1983

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

Lola Lasurt’s artistic activity focuses on painting and video and many times also on collaborative processes that confer a universal projection, to her works of a more personal character.

 

The project about the ‘des-time’ can be understood as the analysis and the questioning of a time period, previous to hers. This is one of the main axis of her work, that frequently uses as a starting point elements from the material and aesthetic culture, that reveal behavioral patterns and ideological parameters of a determined era.  

 

Her pieces revolve around the themes of the memory and the oblivion, the nostalgia and the amnesiac need. Lola Lasurt is interested in the historical individual time and its relationship with the guidelines of the hegemonic culture and the construction of collective symbols.

Conquest Drawings, 2014

Girona, 1982

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

From the exercise of drawing and writing, Alicia Kopf reflects on apparently individual issues that have become generational concerns.

 

The expressive dimension of her work is related to her studies in Fine Arts and Comparative Literature, studies that allow her to get closer to subjects as diverse as poor housing or the epic of polar exploration from a position that combines both awe and ironic distance.

 

Alicia Kopf’s work arises from a metaphor, which allows her to perform an analytic exercise that will finally lead to different associations. Thus, in her project Articantàrtic, from the appropriation and the reshaping of graphical and narrative documents, Alicia Kopf turns a historical account into a first person narrative concerning resistance, obsession and the idea of conquest.

Lliris blancs, 1988

Barcelona, 1931-2005

 

 

Joan Hernández Pijuan started painting during the sixties with a style related to expressionism. Nevertheless, during the seventies the empty space started gaining prominence in his paintings such as the geometrical figures. As he mentioned himself, `the space´ became the objective of his work; `I’d say that a constant preoccupation is, and has been finding a space as total protagonist of the canvass. (…) A space as a living element and not as a surface upon which one draws or places himself.´

 

The landscape of his childhood in the town of Folquer have become a pictorial motive in his adult age: Hernández Pijuan resorts to a memory exercise to recreate it synthetically in his painting.

 

The objective of this painter was never to achieve a descriptive or narrative painting, but to emphasize through the monochrome the pictorial technique itself.

Vegetal animal, 2018-2020

Seville, 1934

Lives and works in Madrid

 

 

Luis Gordillo started his career during the fifties when he travelled to Paris and got acquainted with the European art of the time, in particular with artists such as Wols, Dubuffet, Michaux and Fautrier. In his first works the influence of surrealism and Tàpies can be appreciated to which an early seventies Pop art associated iconography would be incorporated in later years.

 

Gordillo becomes one of the permanently renovating painters of the pictorial language and one of the artists that during the early seventies reincorporate figuration. It’s likewise in that moment, when he starts to work with photographic images, that this, in some way or another, is introduced in the process of creation in his paintings.

 

Both ideas, that of the process and the continuous construction as resource of accumulation, are elements that are permanently present in his work.

Wonders, 2016

Olot, 1970

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

Carles Congost’s work revolves around the construction of personality and the behaviour codes and it is noted by the redevelopment of cinematographic, photographic and musical stereotypes. His work is developed in a harmonic way along with different disciplines –photographs, videos, sound and drawing- incorporating at the same time a classical and ironical treatment to the image.

 

The art world constitutes one of the themes that Congost has incorporated to his recent work, from the theatrical stagings that question the mechanisms, to the dynamics and stereotypes of the art world itself.

Alfons Borrell

Barcelona, 1931 – Sabadell, 2020

 

 

Alfons Borrell is one of the most prominent representatives of lyrical abstraction in Catalonia.

 

After attending the studio of Anglada Camarasa and the School of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi in Barcelona, Alfons Borrell began his artistic career in the fifties, within figuration at first. His work evolved into abstract expressionism and, already in the sixties, to the gestural painting.

 

In the mid-seventies he developed the style of its own, detached of any label, characterized by a sober chromatism that  is consciously disassociated from the material informality. In his painting, the color is imposed on the form, from a language that waives any reference, craving and seeking restraint and rigor.

Calella, Barcelona, 1963

Lives and works in Calella, Barcelona

 

Jordi Alcaraz’s work is a reflection on volume, artistic language and time through a lyrical handling of materials. An abstraction that is the result of the battle against limitations of format and conventions.

 

His work is based on the classical tradition of painting and sculpture and alters the meaning of the foundations of a real and recognizable object, to new genesis of meaning and continent.

 

Jordi Alcaraz transgresses surfaces and materials, gives unlikely uses to his pieces and redefines the logic of frames and methacrylate, of stones and plasters, of mirrors and woods, of shadows and metals; changing perceptions and conventional treatments.

 

He has done different bibliophile editions such as “El Viatge a Tokushima”, with text by Joaquim Sala-Sanahuja, or “Diorames”, together with Joan Brossa, Alfons Borrell, Perejaume and Jordi Rosés.

Bucharest, Romania, 1955

Lives and works in New York

 

 

Lydia Dona’s paintings hold many references to the city and the urban environment. So through tubes, screws and other objects that she superimposes to the colour stain, an enormous mechanism without human presence is revealed.

 

The surface of her paintings may recall the American abstract legacy of Pollock or Clyfford – Though the colours drift apart by their luminosity- that is juxtaposed to the mechanic images of the vanguards.

 

Lydia Dona maintains in her work the permanent conflict between urban abstractions with its noisy rhythm and the micro cosmos that makes it possible.

Barcelona 1954

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

 

 

Josep Riera i Aragó can be described as a visual poet, a sculptor who is equally at ease in the painting studio or in the printmakers workshop. Very early in his artistic development he established a deceivingly simple iconography to surprisingly universal and inescapable results. During the 1980s Riera i Aragó discovers his interest in the deep-sea environment, submarines, airplanes and machines operated by engines. This trace of the machine has since then been a clear thread through his oeuvre. Never repetitive, each “machine” he creates, regardless of the medium, evokes without pathos or condescension, a clear and sympathetic view of humanity. They machines are not only blurring the traditional frontiers between sculpture and painting, finally overlapping the two artforms, it also blurs the space between functional machines with a direct purpose and the life of the objects as art pieces. Riera i Aragó’s work highlights the machines, seen in its own dysfunction, in what is has been created for but never manage to do. His zeppelins, airplanes, ships and submarines must assume their inability to sail or fly. 

 

Besides from Riera i Aragó’s sculptures made in bronze and at times recovered iron, his oeuvre also holds great paintings and works on paper utilizing the same iconography as the sculptures; propellers, engines and machines. Especially his later painting seems to almost mimic or portray his sculptures, creating a close narrative between the two. Riera i Aragó’s pieces are essential to the understanding of some of the most characteristic emblems of our time, the world of machines and artifacts in general. His works speaks paradoxically about the machine, its transience, its capacity for suggestion, on a journey back and forth from real to imaginary space.

Game / Rite (on G.A.), 2009

Mexico City, 1974

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

Erick Beltrán analyzes and reflects on the edition concept and the discourse constructions. He investigates the power that the different graphic means exert in their distribution of information, as well as explicit treatment on different conducts and values.

 

He works with diverse formats as the multiple or the book; he experiments and investigates the link between public art and the diverse graphic languages.

 

The archive, the museum and the library are tools and natural means in their investigation process. A process in which the edition concept focuses all the work, understanding it as the mechanism with which communication through images that create political, economical and cultural discourses in contemporary societies are defined, evaluated, classified and reproduced.

Muntadas Look, See, Perceive

Barcelona, 1942

Lives and works between Barcelona, New York and Venice.

 

 

Antoni Muntadas’s work has developed from its beginning –early seventies– a constant criticism towards the languages and messages of the media as clear instruments of power.

 

Since the first moment he used the video as useful tool to dissect and make the mechanisms of communications visible, referring to television and the designated `media landscape´. This genuine study and treatment turned him into an early pioneer in the audiovisual artistic field.

 

Likewise, Muntadas has analyzed and questioned the relationships that are established between the public and the private through his video works, photographs and multimedia installations; it’s from the early nineties that he incorporates internet to this list.

 

Also, since the 90s, he initiates new kinds of long-term. In each of these projects a principal concept is developed, which extends through different stages and contexts.

El motiu, 1994

Sant Pol de Mar, 1957

Lives and works in Sant Pol de Mar

 

 

Perejaume started to exhibit his work during the late seventies and since then he has been developing it in parallel, either in visual disciplines or in literary extension.

 

The landscape is a recurring subject analyzed and explored in his work, retaking and reevaluating the presence it has had most of all, in its literary and visual production. Through this approach, his relationship with the landscape is examined from diverse points of view none of which are exempt of irony. Points of view that are shaped through painting, sculpture, photography, installations, video or the intervention on the natural environment itself.

 

For Perejaume, man is part of the landscape, he isn’t an outsider to it and he is yet another agent in its conformation and evolution, as if the geologic time would have been accelerated.

Zaragoza, 1964

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

Javier Peñafiel’s work, drawings, videos, texts and sculptures make up a linguistic system parallel to a reality to which he is unconnected.

 

All through his career, Javier Peñafiel has built up a universe inhabited by characters; by sentences that work autonomously, such as phrases that have the duty to bother the quiet and routine based use of the language by the spectator; or videos where diverse elements are combined in the shape of tableaux, sharing a space but keeping at the same time their identity separate.

 

The works of Javier Peñafiel show the necessity and the difficulty in direct communication. His works investigate the double identity – as obstacle and as a bridge- that the language represents in such communication.

Gran Sur, 2011. Fernando Prats

Santiago de Chile, 1967

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

In his work Fernando Prats “paints” or, we’d rather say, recreates nature; he deals with registering tracks, making the invisible visible, giving voice and image to what was present but kept unnoticed.

 

Using seismographs, traces, photographs, videos… he registers the beat of different realities on smoked supports, from the flight of birds to the wild jet of a geyser, the deep coal of mines or the powerful waves that break against the cliff. Thus, Fernando Prats holds an unorthodox relationship with painting, both for the choice of his instruments and for the intervention of chance.

 

His work is formalized in actions which himself registers, that show the creative processes intrinsic to his work. Fernando Prats paintings are time-objects, as they condense in their finished form a story, the one of its creation, whose times often have nothing to do with the ones of the artist, but with the natural rhythms.

Laguna veneziana, 1987

Barcelona, 1922-2009

 

 

Besides his long pictorial career which has boosted him internationally, Albert Ràfols Casamada has another creative side as a literary poet. It is of no surprise that his multidisciplinary character attracts him to teaching and pedagogy in the world of fine Art.

 

In his painting, modernity’s fragile equilibrium has been developed and maintained: his work, of classical origin, incorporates at the same time the legacy of the avant-gardes.

 

During the early seventies he abandoned figuration to work in the field of abstract painting that would take him, during the eighties and nineties, to develop a more lyrical abstraction. This process would lead to what is his most recognized stage in his artistic career.

 

On the other hand, Ràfols Casamada has had a fundamental role in the renewal of the arts teaching in Spain being the founding member of the Eina School in Barcelona in 1967.