Fleeing boredom. About John Baldessari’s “Pure Beauty” at MACBA
Link to the article in A*DESK There are artists who open avenues for thought and discussion. In the case of Baldessari, this inspiring role is also accompanied by a playfully transgressive attitude that is evident in each and (almost) each of the works in the retrospective that the MACBA is dedicating to him these days. […]
Forests and sharks. On top 40 rankings and artists that are difficult to pigeonhole
In recent months, when it seems that all information must be filtered by the crisis and the economy, some newspapers have celebrated the publication of the Spanish version of the book “The 12 Million Dollar Shark” by economist Don Thompson to bring together a series of arguments with which to discredit contemporary art. The book […]
“The cultural environment has been perverted.” Interview with Moritz Küng, director of Canòdrom
Link to the article in A*DESK Until his appointment as the new director of Canòdrom, the Swiss Moritz Küng regularly came and went to Barcelona to begin to define his programme of action and also to familiarise himself with the context and its agents. Responsible for the deSingel exhibition programme in Antwerp since 2003, Küng […]
Conceptual Revisited. About Mario Torres García
Link to the article in A*DESK In a playful and nostalgic way at the same time, Mario García Torres’ work tends to revisit conceptual art. In his first solo exhibition in Barcelona he investigates the secrets that accompanied a work by Robert Barry. Like other artists of his generation, Mario García Torres (Mexico, 1975) is […]
You are not Alone. Art as a driving force for awareness, action and the fight against AIDS
In 1987, six years after the first cases of AIDS were detected, a group of six American artists and activists created “Silence = Death”, a slogan that aimed to break the taboos surrounding the disease. In twenty years, things have changed a lot. Medical research has advanced spectacularly. However, in many non-Western countries, prevention and […]
Something is moving
There are movements in the Spanish art scene: new directions at the CGAC, the MUSAC, the Virreina Centro de la Imagen and the Museo Picasso in Malaga, a competition about to be resolved at the Canódromo and Hangar… but in addition to these variations of institutional pieces, other synergies are beginning to be detected. Other […]
About the everyday
“The spectacle of the everyday.” This is the title of the tenth edition of the Lyon Biennial, which has just opened only a few weeks ago. Recently, Photoespaña’09 in Madrid, dedicated to “The everyday,” also closed. If, as Harald Szeeman said, artists are the seismographs of the changes that occur in society, there is no […]
Angels, virgins and rockets. About “The Dream and the Promise” by Aleksandra Mir at Galería Joan Prats
Link to the article in A*DESK In her second solo exhibition in Barcelona, Aleksandra Mir returns to a theme that interests her, the moon and space, this time in combination with angels, saints, virgins and little else. The moon, rockets, aviation, newspapers and global communication have been recurring themes in Aleksandra Mir’s work. The dialectic […]
Bad times for criticism
The American artist Lawrence Weiner once wrote, “all art comes from anger,” or in other words, from discontent, from the need to point out what doesn’t work and what should be rethought. This is a line that has run through art for centuries: from Honoré Daumier’s caricatures in which he exposed all those situations that […]
Disabled documents. About “On the margins of art. Creation and political commitment” at the MACBA Study and Documentation Centre.
Link to the article in A*DESK One of the responsibilities of a museum is to activate meanings by contextualising what is presented. For example, it is not the same to look at Richard Hamilton’s emblematic collage “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” in isolation, than to see it alongside […]
