Tag Archives: photography

Camila Cañeque

On May 26, we will open Hole In The Ground, a collective exhibition that brings together works by Cabrita, Camila Cañeque, Hannah Collins, Pablo del Pozo, Mercedes Pimiento and Fernando Prats.

 

The title of the exhibition, inspired by a David Bowie song, refers to the main theme around the displayed pieces, the concept of territory and its materiality. Some of the works deal with the ways of representing the ground, understood as horizontality, both in nature and in the urban environment. In this way, human activity is put in the spotlight, evidencing aspects such as belonging to a territory, the memory of a place or exploitation of the soil and its impact.

 

While some of the presented works speak of very specific places, others refer to the material that we step on when walking. Cabrita, in his work Fingerprints, raises a horizontal plane to the wall, thus turning a simple board, a humble material that was surely used as a work surface in his studio, into a testimony of his artistic activity. The artist offers us a new look at an everyday object and also a review of the place of creation.

 

Camila Cañeque’s work ground on ground on ground shows accumulations of historical layers through grounds. The artist’s work addresses passivity and, in this installation, she uses the notion of the in-between, creating a space that is neither above nor below, before nor after.

 

Hannah Collins’ work Nomad places emphasis on the surface, on skin, on the outside, signaling the artist’s interest in boundaries – most specifically of the body.  With this portrait of a character whose face remain hidden, the artist allows us to participate through the free interpretation of the image. The artist deals with the historical, the social and the political through images of everyday scene, such as Floor of dreams. This work, made in La Mina, is part of an extensive project by the artist focused on this neighbourhood inhabited mainly by the gypsy community in Barcelona.

 

In the work of Pablo del Pozo, interest in the territory is a recurring theme. In Tierra rojiza, the artist uses the pig as a symbol of his region of origin, to create a materiality that refers to the stereotyped vision of Extremadura as an arid and dry landscape.

 

Mercedes Pimiento’s work is characterized by making visible all the material culture that nourishes our society but which we try to hide, turning into sculptures the structures that are hidden in architecture, such as pipes, cables and canals, using organic or artificial materials.

 

Fernando Prats is interested in the territory of Chile and South America and its representation through historical or reinterpreted maps. In Territorio silenciado #2, he proposes a critical view of a continent condemned to be endlessly exploited. In Affatus, on the other hand, the canvas becomes the territory of creation where, subverting the traditional gesture of the painter, the worms have left their own mark. We also present an unreleased video, Zonificación, accompanied by a work on paper, composed from the projection of the recorded action, and which establishes a dialogue with the spiral staircase of the Macba, in a centrifugal movement that is access, exit, ascend and descend, the body and the architecture in connection and amplification with the Richard Meier building.

 

 

Cabrita (Lisbon, 1956) lives and works in Lisbon. His work has received international recognition and has been crucial to the understanding of sculpture since the mid-eighties. In recent years he has had solo exhibitions at CAC Malaga, Mudam Luxembourg, CGAC Santiago de Compostela, Museo Serralves Porto, Palazzo Molina de Cartagena, Mexico, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Galeria Arte Moderna e Contemporânea, Lisbon, MAXXI Rome, The Arts Club of Chicago and Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, France. He has participated in important international exhibitions, such as Documenta IX in Kassel (1992), the 21st and 24th São Paulo Biennial (1994 and 1998), the Venice Biennial (in 1997, in 2003 representing Portugal and in 2013) and the 10th Lyon Biennial (2009). He is currently showing the sculptural installation Les Trois Grâces, at Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, and an installation entitled Field at the 59th Venice Biennale.

Camila Cañeque (Barcelona, 1984) explores in different ways the theme of resistance to progress through performance, sound, objects, installations and writing. She has exhibited in several art centres in Barcelona such as La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Blue Project Foundation, Fabra i Coats, Caixaforum, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, in Madrid and at the Queens Museum of Art, New York. She was a finalist for the Miquel Casablancas Prize and participated in residencies at Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, Fabra i Coats, Barcelona, Nida Art Colony, Lithuania, ZKU, Berlin, Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro, among others.

Hannah Collins (London, 1956). Currently lives between London and Almeria. Between 1989 and 2010, she lived in Barcelona, exhibiting at Galeria Joan Prats since 1992. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, was nominated for the 1993 Turner Prize, and received the 2015 SPECTRUM International Photography Prize, including exhibitions at Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Camden Art Centre in London and Baltic Centre in Newcastle. Among other museums and art centres, she has exhibited at SFMOMA, San Francisco; Centre Pompidou Paris; FRAC Bretagne; Fotomuseum Winterthur; Museo UNAL, Bogotá; Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; MUDAM Luxembourg; Tate Modern, London; Seoul Museum of Art; VOX image contemporaine, Montreal; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Fundación La Caixa, Madrid and Barcelona; La Laboral, Gijón; Artium, Vitoria; CAC, Málaga.

Pablo del Pozo (Badajoz, 1994) lives and works in Barcelona. Graduated in Fine Arts at the Universitat de Barcelona, he was selected in the Biennial of Valls and has won the Guasch-Coranty Award, participating in the exhibition at the Centre Tecla Sala, in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. He also participated in the Biennial Jeune Création Européenne with exhibitions in museums in various European cities. He has received the creation award of the Sala d’Art Jove de la Generalitat de Catalunya, exhibiting there in 2018. He was nominated for the Miquel Casablancas Prize, and in 2019 he exhibited individually at the Arranz Bravo Foundation in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Mercedes Pimiento (Seville, 1990) lives and works in Barcelona, where she is pursuing a doctorate in Fine Arts. With a degree in Fine Arts from the Universidad de Sevilla and a Master’s Degree in Artistic Production and Research from the Universitat de Barcelona, she has been selected for programs and grants such as INJUVE, the Madrid Community Training Program – Open Studio, the Kiosko Project of the José Guerrero Centre, the Guasch Coranty Foundation Grant for artistic creation, the Sant Andreu Contemporani residency program, or the Iniciarte Program. She has exhibited in museums and art centres such as Centre Tecla Sala in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, CAAC Seville, Fabra i Coats in Barcelona, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Fundación Naturgy in A Coruña, Centro José Guerrero in Granada, among others.

Fernando Prats (Santiago de Chile, 1967) has lived and worked in Barcelona since 1990. His work is known for the actions undertaken mostly in Chile, among them Gran Sur, Isla Elefante, Antarctica, Acción Lota, Géiser del Tatio, Salar de Atacama, Mina a Rajo Abierto o Congelación, Collins Glacier and Chilean Antarctica. He has participated in exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale; Mediations Biennale, Poznan; Biennial of the Canary Islands, Chile Triennial, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile. He has significant works in the public space of Chile and a work commissioned by Barcelona. He is currently presenting the solo exhibition Aun tendría que haber luciérnagas, at Fragmentos, Espacio de Arte y Memoria, Museo Nacional de Bogotá.

13th Shanghai Biennale

13th Shanghai Biennale

Bodies of Water

April 17 – June 25, 2021

 

 

The Power Station of Art (PSA) announces the culmination of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water. Its main exhibition PHASE 03: AN EXHIBITION opens on April 17, 2021, with 64 participating artists presenting projects, including 33 new commissions, at the PSA and other venues across Shanghai.

 

These participating artists include Antoni Muntadas.

Muntadas will be exhibiting RED (2017). Color photography, Mural of 64 photos, 40 × 60 cm each.

 

RED is a site-specific work consist of a big panel of 64 photographs showing the results of Antoni Muntadas’ flow through the Shanghai streets and squares on a given day. That day was October 1st, 2017, coinciding with the China National Day that celebrates the sixty-eighth anniversary of the formation of the People’s Republic of China. Carried away by the course of the celebrations, Muntadas captured through his camera the drift of Shanghai’s citizens and the pulse of the city, always around the red color ubiquitous in the city.

 

 

+ info about 13th Shanghai Biennale

 

Hannah Collins

21.06 – 13.10.2019

FUNDACIÓ ANTONI TÀPIES

 

Conversación / Conversation 20.06, 19.00h / 7pm

Conversación con Hannah Collins y Anna Puigjaner en el auditorio de la Fundació Tàpies, 20.06, 19.00h  /  Conversation with Hannah Collins and Anna Puigjaner at the Fundació Tàpies auditorium, 20.06, 7 p.m.

 

Hannah Collins, artista, y Anna Puigjaner, doctora en arquitectura, cofundadora de MAIO arquitectos y autora de Kitchenless City, conversarán sobre arquitectura, colectivismo y sostenibilidad durante la presentación de la exposición que pone el foco en la figura arquitecto egipcio Hassan Fathy (1900-1989).

Hannah Collins, artist, and Anna Puigjaner, Ph.D. in architecture, co-founder of MAIO architects and author of Kitchenless City, will talk about architecture, collectivism and sustainability during the presentation of the exhibition that focuses on Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989).

 

+ info

Chema Madoz CCCB

06.06.2019, 18h30

CCCB, Barcelona

 

 

Chema Madoz, Premio Nacional de Fotografía, ha creado una fotografía inspirada en la física cuántica a través de un diálogo con Ignacio Cirac, director del Instituto Max Planck de Óptica Cuántica en Múnich, uno de los mayores expertos mundiales en computación cuántica. En esta mesa redonda se analizará el proceso de creación de esta pieza y el papel de la filantropía en la investigación científica.

 

+ info

Guangzhou

Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China

15.12.2017 – 8.3.2018

 

Simultaneous Eidos — Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017 will be held from December 15, 2017 to March 8, 2018 at Guangdong Museum of Art. The predecessor of Simultaneous Eidos — Guangzhou Image Triennial was Guangzhou International Photography Biennial Exhibition hosted by the Guangdong Museum of Art, which was one of the major international photography biennials in China. Its basic purpose is to uphold the humanistic standpoint with international horizon and sociology of images and participate and promote the development of contemporary photography and culture in China. Reviewing the past three photography biennials (in 2005, 2007 and 2009), each exhibition established a theme and academic orientation focused on the history of photographic photography in order to showcase contemporary photographic practices. At the same time, the passion of national art museums for photography research and collection is ignited.

 

+ info

Paris Photo 2017

Galeria Joan Prats is presenting Hannah Collins (London, 1956) and Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942), for Paris Photo Fair.

 

The method used by Collins in The interior and the exterior, Noah Purifoy, 2015, pays tribute to Walker Evans, through documentation of the sculptures by African-American artist Purifoy (1917-2004) and also with voices recordings.

 

Muntadas, continues his research on the places of power with Architektur / Räume / Gesten II, 2017. In these 10 triptychs, Muntadas assembles archival images, connecting places of power with gestures. The artist thus highlights the way in which the architectural form crystallizes gestures and decisions of power.

 

PARIS PHOTO Booth D15.
Grand Palais. 09-12 NOV 2017

Arizona

Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

01.09 – 31.12.2017

 

Coming September 1 to Phoenix Art Museum, Past/Future/Present: Contemporary Brazilian Art from the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo presents a rare panorama of the most innovative art produced in Brazil from the 1990s to the 2010s. The exhibition will be the first major presentation of artworks from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (MAM-SP) in the United States. Premiering on September First Friday, Past/Future/Present will feature 70 artworks created by 59 artists in diverse media, including painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance.

 

+ info

 

Luis Gordillo

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.

Hannah Collins

London, 1956

Lives and works between London and Níjar (Almería, Spain)

 

 

Hannah Collins is one of the pioneer artists in the use of the large format in the photographic discipline. She became known in the international scene during the early nineties.

 

The size of her works is often monumental, however the portrayed theme is often seemingly close to the spectator, incorporating a reflection around the fleetingness of present time and its survival through the memory of places.

 

From 2000, Hannah Collins began to introduce film and video often projected over multiple screens incorporating constructed musical soundtracks. She has maintained a performative element in her work and has expanded her interest in those people and places who inhabit the limit or margins of society and in the future of the human species. Her still images are often located between documentation and precise acted performance. Migration and modern attempts to improve our vision of the future have been subjects in recent works including The Fertile Forest (2015) a work made in the Colombian Amazon, I will make up a Song (2018) and The Earth Beneath My Feet (2022).

Cabello/Carceller

Helena Cabello (Paris, 1963) and Ana Carceller (Madrid, 1964)

Live and work in Madrid

 

 

Cabello/Carceller’s work is set in a territory from which they question, reflect and/or fracture the roles or stereotypes associated to gender. They understand identity as something built in conflict or in consonance with a social, cultural, political and economic environment. They point at an `I´ that is always found according to the `others´, this idea vertebrates their production.

 

In their works the patterns, which are linked in a static way to either masculine or feminine roles, are revised. In this way, images are subverted in their works along with behavioral codes and attitudes, associated to that which is commonly considered as masculine or feminine.

 

The rereading that Cabello/Carceller’s work forms in the mentioned models, position the spectator facing multiple prejudice, assumed values and contradictions that manage to effectively destabilize a univocal vision of reality.

Chema Madoz

Madrid, 1958
Lives and works in Madrid

 

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

 

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

Perejaume

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.

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.

Caio Reisewitz

São Paulo, 1967

Lives and works in São Paulo

 

 

The register of a high-speed changing nature is one of the subjects that articulates Caio Reisewitz’s photographic work and, in this sense, his images are placed in a tradition in which photographic means are witnesses and capture ephemeral realities. The activity of man on the planet, and in certain areas in particular, radically modifies the appearance of the landscape.

 

His photographs, which are mostly large format, are characterized by their frontality and by a spectacular clarity that shows an exuberant nature and an unreal utopian beauty. On one occasion he himself commented: ‘sometimes these images don’t seem real, utopian they are, but they are true, it is the pure reality’.

Julião Sarmento

Lisbon, 1948- Estoril, 2021

 

 

From the early seventies, Julião Sarmento has explored the possibilities of painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video. There is a process of suggestive hiding in his works that situates the spectator not only as an observer but also as a participant of his narrative.

 

The woman is a recurring motive in his works and from it he elaborates concepts linked to sexuality, desire or seduction. The relationships he evokes, on latent tension, violence, obsession or mystery, are obtained from a meticulous dynamic between the participating agents in the physical space, in the case of installations, or in the edition, in case of films and videos. The resulting works unleash all the detached intrigue of the images in constant suspense and tension.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

—-

 

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

solid surface, 2015

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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