Jafre, 10 years of biennial
It began in a casual and festive way: in 2003, Mario Flecha invited a group of friends to hold an art event in a house he had just bought in Jafre, a town in the Baix Empordà with 300 inhabitants. With all the irony in the world, he called it a “biennial.” It was the […]
Momentos de autenticidad: Mireia Sallarès y Bernard-Marie Koltès
Link to the article in A*DESK We’ve been watching it for a while. Perhaps it is due to the crisis and the cuts, but not only that. It is happening in most cultural events: cinema, theatre, music and, of course, visual arts. There is a return to self-management, to do it yourself, to direct and […]
New stories vs. immovable collections
Link to A*DESK For some time now, the programming of contemporary art museums and foundations has not been mainly based on exhibitions and projects curated by independent (or “multi-dependent” to be more precise) collaborators outside the institution. The crisis of the institutions, which is both economic and identity-related, is responsible for the fact that collections […]
À la ville de… Barcelona
Link to the article in A*DESK Urban imaginaries allow us to approach social and urban reality from symbolic, cultural and intangible dimensions. The anthropologist and cultural critic Néstor García Canclini stated in his book Imaginarios urbanos that “many assumptions that guide the actions and omissions of citizens derive from how we perceive the uses of […]
Back to Tàpies
Link to the article in A*DESK It has been so long since Tàpies was the subject of serious study that it is now news. A few months ago, Valentín Roma went “against Tàpies” and confronted him with the present (at the Fundació Tàpies). Now Vicenç Todolí wants to go in his favour and show his […]
About factories and creators
The need for artists to use spaces appropriate to their individual needs and professional practice has always existed. The dematerialization of art, since the conceptual practices of the 60s, freed artists from personal involvement in the process of creating artistic objects and the concept of “studio”, traditionally considered as the place of learning the most […]
Venice and the national pavilions
Since its inauguration in 1895, the idea of national representation at the Venice Biennale has gained increasing prominence. The architecture of the pavilions in the Giardini was built on the basis of national characteristics. But what role does “the national” play in contemporary art today? Can we speak of national art in the 21st century? […]
Welcome to the desert of the real
Link to the article in A*DESK This is a phrase uttered by the character of Morpheus in a scene from the film Matrix (1999). Slavoj Žižek also quoted it in the title of one of his books, in which he recalled Jorge Luis Borges’ fable about cartographers who, wanting to be extremely faithful to reality, […]
Economics in Art
Link to the article in A*DESK The theme of the summer exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Krakow (MOCAK) is not exactly light. Curated by Monika Koziol, Delfina Piekarska and Maria Anna Potocka, Economics in Art aims to analyse aspects like the possible dialogues between art and economics, art’s dependence on the market […]
From Ryan Gander to Basquiat, by way of Schnabel, press releases and other forms of mediation
Link to the article in A*DESK I’ve been wanting to see the film Basquiat (1996) for a long time now and for one reason or another I’ve never had the opportunity. Last weekend, Loop and Ryan Gander gave me the excuse or perfect occasion to do so. In presenting the video by Ryan Gander Basquiat […]
