art

The new exhibition of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), ‘Critical Episodes (1957-2011)’, shows the last decades’ deep and historical changes through art. This exhibition is the result of a new arrangement of the MACBA’s collection. It displays about 200 works by 64 artists such as Eduardo Chillida, Hans Haacke, Mike Kelley, Antoni Tàpies, Jaume Plensa, Susana Solano and Oriol Vilapuig, amongst others. MACBA’s Director, Bartomeu Marí, has highlighted that this new exhibition “brings out new works and others that were displayed a long time ago”. It also proves that MACBA’s collection is already “rich, mature and diverse”.

MiRA, the Music and Audiovisual Research Festival of Barcelona, merges electronic music and visual arts with artists such as Lone, Actress, Dan Tombs, Julien Mier, Hyetal, Actop, Gnomalab and the Desilence Studio. The MiRA festival has been organised for a second year, after a very successful first event. Hosted in the former Fabra i Coats factory, this year the festival will increase its offerings and double the number of related workshops. The festival is Barcelona’s autumn’s must-see event for electronic music fans and visual arts lovers.

A journey around the world through art. This is the aim of the new museum in Barcelona, the Museum of World Cultures, which will open its doors in June 2014 in two gothic palaces in front of the Picasso Museum. This new cultural offer in the capital of Catalonia will host art pieces from non-western collections of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and private collections, mainly from Folch’s collection which was given to the City Council in 2011. The Museum of World Cultures will display about 700 pieces from Asia, Africa, America and Oceania in permanent and temporary exhibitions. It will also host an educational area. The museum will occupy an area of 2,100 square meters and will cost approximately €5 million.

The Fundació Joan Miró, located in the Catalan capital, unveils a temporary exhibition called “Explosion! The legacy of Jackson Pollock”, which shows the influence Pollock’s works had on later artists. The temporary exhibition is made up of 70 works from 35 different artists, such as Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Shozo Simamoto, Yoko Ono and Jackson Pollock himself. The exhibition is co-produced by Barcelona’s Miró Foundation and the Moderna Museet from Stockholm. It will run until 24th February 2013.

The old Fabra i Coats industrial complex in Barcelona hosts a new centre for Contemporary Art in Catalonia in one of its buildings. The industrial complex is also hosting the ‘Creation Factory’, a socialization space for artists, where they can work on new projects. The Contemporary Art centre was unveiled with the first exhibition called ‘Això no és una exposició d’art, tampoc’ (‘This is not an art exhibition, either’) based on ‘performance’. The whole project, which at the moment uses 600 square metres on the ground floor, will occupy a total of 2,450 square metres of exhibition space - three floors in the front wing of the old factory.

The Suñol Foundation celebrates its fifth anniversary with a new exhibition of 100 works from its collection, 30 of which have never been seen before. The exhibition combines works from Catalan artists such as Joan Miró, Jaume Plensa, Antoni Tàpies and Salvador Dalí, with others by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Man Ray and Alighiero Boetti, among others.

The renovation work in Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Tarragona have revealed tens of polychromes on the walls of this temple of transition from Romanesque to Gothic. The grey painting layer that covered the walls of the building concealed these polychromes which date from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The Medieval artworks were mostly painted in shades of red and green. This is the fourth phase of the renovation work that started in 2010 and have cost €3 million, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

The owner of one of the world’s largest art collections, unveiled the exhibition named ‘Rusiñol, Monet, Gauguin, Sunyer. Landscapes in Carmen Thyssen’s Collection’ at Girona’s CaixaForum. The exhibition shows 51 paintings by these masters as well as Joan Miró, Joaquim Mir, Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart, Théodore Rousseau, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. The exhibition aims to set a “dialogue”, and show the evolution of the Catalan and European landscape paintings. Carmen Thyssen stated her relationship with Catalonia’s National Museum of Art (MNAC) is “excellent” and “it would be a dream” to have her collection in Barcelona, although “it is still early” to make an official announcement.

The permanent collection of the Can Framis Museum, located in a functionalist venue built three years ago, reopened its doors this Saturday. The museum, run by the Fundació Vila Casas, has restructured its permanent collection of contemporary paintings originating from the 1960’s onwards. The works are by various artists born or living in Catalonia and includes 45 new paintings, 20 of which are new acquisitions.

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands opened their own pavilion and exhibition at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice on Monday. They are participating in the ‘Collateral Events’ alongside the official programme. The exhibit shows the work of 9 young Catalan and Baleric architects, focusing on an architecture with a greater human dimension.

The new city government is considering the continuation of a project started by the last Mayor. The venture proposed by the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), the specialist higher education institution co-founded by Paul McCartney, is to open a Barcelona version (BIPA) in the coastal town of Sitges. The previous proposals included a large scale urban development plan, however the new Sitges Town Council would now use existing buildings. A public competition to manage the project could be opened in the upcoming months.

The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (Catalonia’s National Museum of Art) is considering changing its name to include ‘Barcelona’. The Museum Director, Pepe Serra, wants to better explain the Museum to a global audience and considers using the “Barcelona brand” as a superior way of raising the gallery’s status. Also he believes the collections of Romanesque art, which are considered exceptional, have not been sufficiently exploited on an international level. The Museum Director also announced that despite the crisis, they will open up “many more areas for free”.

Catalan and international painting from 1870 to 1970 will interact to show the relation between people and landscape. The exhibition ‘Landscapes of light, dream landscapes. From Gauguin to Delvaux’ kicks off the activities at the Espai Carmen Thyssen, in Sant Feliu de Guíxols Monastry, on the Costa Brava. This will be the first of many exhibitions in this Catalan coastal town, said Carmen Thyssen. In fact the Baroness and the town’s City Council are planning to build a permanent Thyssen Museum in the town. Thyssen also stated that it would be “wonderful” to show more paintings in her collection at Catalonia’s National Art Museum’s expansion.

The ‘Gaudí Experiència’ offers the visitor, in 9 different languages, an interactive experience, diving into the work of the Catalan genius who designed the Sagrada Família, La Pedrera, the Casa Batlló and the Parc Güell. In fact, the new museum is located next to the famous park. It shows how nature’s elements including cypress trees, water and the Montserrat Mountain inspired Gaudí.

From May 17th to June 2nd video art invades over 150 spaces in Barcelona during the 10th edition of the Loop Fair and the Screen Festival. The first showcases the latest ideas in International video art. The second, Screen, offers close contact with audiovisual creative practices including the brightest ideas and latest developments, all in very different places. Moreover, this year’s new addition is the first ever Screen Forum Pro, an International Symposium under the slogan: “What about production?” The annual video art festival attracts numerous professionals from the world of art, including representatives of leading museums, artists and galleries worldwide, as well as an audience eager to discover the latest trends in video art.