Around 70 international artists participate in Barcelona Gallery Weekend

Barcelona Gallery Weekend opens its doors, for its eighth edition, from September 15 to 18. Among the exhibits to see during the four days, there is one dedicated to Salvador Dalí with around 30 drawings linking the artist to the seaside Cadaqués landscape in northeastern Catalonia. 

Visitors will get to see up to 32 art galleries featuring the work of around 70 national and international artists, such as French Nicolas Daubanes who will present, next to Catalan Domènec, an exposition reviewing historic moments where architecture has solved human needs.

Dalí’s exhibit will take place in the Mayoral art gallery, while Daubanes and Domènec’s will be held in the ADN Galeria. 

The festival, free of charge and open to everyone, highlights the importance of "art galleries as a place of culture creation and of knowledge, sites of experimentation, and discovery, which allows connecting between artists, collectors, public, and institutions," organizers said on Tuesday.

Among national artists, there will be Esther Ferrer, a pioneer and the utmost representative of the art performance in Spain. She is specialized in featuring a live presentation to the audience drawing their attention to acting, poetry, music, dance, or even painting. 

Another renowned artist, Susana Solano, will present her sculptural artwork at Artur Ramon Art gallery. Her sculptures will be accompanied by pieces from historical vanguard artists, like Julio González, Eduardo Chillida, and Manolo Hugué.

This year, Barcelona Gallery Weekend will extend to L21 Factory, a hybrid art gallery project founded in Palma de Mallorca which recently opened in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat a production center and an exhibition area.

Suburbia Contemporary is the other novelty in this year’s edition, while recurring House Of Chappaz, Galeria Joan Prats, LAB36, àngels barcelona, and Sala Parés, will open their doors once again.

Other leading names from the international scene

From 15 until 22 September only, Galeria Marc Domènech will be offering a journey around Ana Peters’ most figurative period, through 20 pieces framed by the context of political mythologies and feminine stereotypes in Franco’s Spain. At Zielinsky, visitors will find a selection of pieces by Brazilian artist Vera Chaves Barcellos, produced between the ’70s and the present day, in which she reuses images from the media, while at Marlborough, some of the most iconic photos by Irving Penn – one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, known for his work depicting fashion, tribal portraits, and still life – will be on display.

Painters Matthew Musgrave and Daniel Orson Ybarra, at Galería Alegría and Uxval Gochez respectively, observe nature and take it to an abstract level. L21 Factory will show work by Lydia Gifford, who uses paint to transform fabrics into minimalist, abstract pieces with craggy surfaces, and by Hunter Potter, who draws on whimsical, geometric figures inspired by US folklore to celebrate the minutiae of everyday life on a monumental scale. Over at Víctor Lope, Carsten Beck sums up Scandinavian minimalist expression using oil on canvas.

Jean Denant, exhibited at RocioSantaCruz, alludes to the organization of territories – imagined or real – that feed off each other, demonstrating the porous fragility of borders, whether psychological, geographical, or political. Wordless and Earthen, the exhibition at Bombon Projects, showcases the ethereal metal sculptures made by Joana Escoval.

Chiquita Room will feature collages by Phillip Maisel, which deal with stories from his family and the wider notions of displacement, belonging, and what our absence leaves behind. Miguel Ángel Madrigal utilizes Barcelona’s architectural elements in Lab36, while Robert Pettena’s exhibition Guerre des rêves [War of Dreams] at Suburbia Contemporary investigates the rules of fiction and how they affect our social lives to the point where we start to doubt reality.

Six walks proposed by independent curators

The program of exhibitions for Barcelona Gallery Weekend will be accompanied by complementary activities of different kinds in the galleries themselves. Various gatherings, talks, walks, presentations, and guided tours will give visitors the opportunity to get to know the artists and gallerists better and delve deeper into the themes dealt with in the exhibitions.

As a new feature, the 2022 edition includes 6 walks proposed by six independent curators. Barcelona Gallery Weekend has invited 6 local curators to design 6 itineraries around the participating galleries, using their curator’s perspective. Under the name ‘A Walk by the Curator...’, visitors will find proposed routes put together by Caterina Almirall, Carolina Ciuti, Carolina Jiménez, Clàudia Elies, Beatriz Escudero, and Rosa Lleó.

The walks, which visitors will follow on their own, can be downloaded from the Barcelona Gallery Weekend website, along with the 6 texts by the 6 curators. On Thursday 15 September at 6 p.m., 3 of the routes will be released, while the other 3 will be up on the afternoon of Friday 16 September.