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The winter-spring season is always a good time for exhibitions in Barcelona, and a lot of interesting shows are currently underway or opening in the next few days. My top pick is the MACBA exhibition about the Centre Internacional de Fotografia Barcelona, offering a singular look at Barcelona's urban spaces and social transformation immediately after the dictatorship.
Photography is definitely the star of the season, with new exhibitions at Foto Colectania and the Barcelona Photography Archive. Plus, unusual urban narratives at Casa Asia, Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov at MACBA, sculpture and object art by leading 20th century artists at the Fundació Suñol, and French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix at Caixaforum. Keep reading for details!
Top Exhibition Pick: a portrait of Transistion-era Barcelona
One of the most fascinating current exhibitions focuses on a short-lived, but undeniably significant moment in Barcelona's – and Spain's - photography history: the Centre Internacional de Fotografía Barcelona. Modelled after the International Center of Photography in New York and its idea of “concerned photography”, the CIFB broke new ground by fostering a revitalised artistic, socio-cultural and educational appreciation of photography. In addition to presenting exhibitions and slideshows and publishing a photography magazine, CIFB organised workshops that saw teachers, students and professional photographers collaborating on projects together.
The centre only lasted five years, but during this time, it assembled a “collective representation of a traumatised city at the end of a long dictatorship”. This rich photographic legacy can currently be seen at the MACBA, which is showing 600 photographs taken between 1978 and 1983. Portraits of the city's neighbourhoods - the run-down Raval, still the red-light district at the time; the shantytowns on Montjuic and around the port – and of the immense social transformations taking place during the Spanish Transistion period, reflected in photo essays about the local gay and transsexual subculture, cabaret nights at the El Molino music hall, the wrestling and boxing scene, and carnival performers in 1978 and 1979 (a festival that was prohibited during the dictatorship).
The exhibition also reproduces one of the classic CIFB slideshows – a reportage about the old Santa Creu psychiatric hospital - with musical accompaniment. The exhibited photos were taken by CIFB workshop participants as well as well-known photographers like Humberto Rivas or Manolo Laguillo, reflecting the CIFB's emphasis on collaboration.
Through May 20, 2012 ** Extended until AUGUST 26, 2012
MACBA, Plaça dels Angels 1, 08001 Barcelona (El Raval)
Admission: 6 EUR (if you live in BCN, check out the Passi, a 12 EUR-pass that let's you see all MACBA exhibitions all year long!)
Top image: Workshop by Lucho Poirot at CIFB c. 1979
Other Winter-Spring Exhibitions:
Citystories & Global Cities
Mini-narratives about the rapid urban transformation of Asian cities, told in different media – i.e. video, news report, documentary or fiction film, novel, photo essay or multimedia installation – by artists, writers, journalists and filmmakers. At Casa Asia through April 30.
Delacroix (1798-1863)
The Caixaforum has paired up with the Louvre Museum to organise the most important exhibition in Spain ever dedicated to the great French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix. The retrospective covers his entire career and includes 130 paintings, including works on special loan from the Louvre, the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute in Chicago. Through May 20.
Image: Self-portrait with green vest, 1837. Musée du Louvre ©Musée du Louvre / Angèle Dequier
Sculpture / Object
The exhibition showcases 36 pieces from the private collection of Josep Suñol and offers an insightful and intriguing look at the evolution of sculpture and object art during the 20th century through the work of great artists like Chillida, Calder, Gargallo, Miró, Arp, Fontana, Giacometti and others. At Fundació Suñol through September 1.
La morada del hombre (The Dwelling of Man)
Another look at a private collection, this time focused on photography. The joint project by the Fundació Suñol and Foto Colectania presents a selection of 165 images from the Martín Z. Margulies Collection (Miami) by 50 photographers and artists, including Bernd and Hilda Becher, Lee Friedlander, Dorothea Lange, Ed Ruscha, William Eggleston and Spencer Tunick. February 22 through June 29.
Image: William Eggleston. Untitled (Blue Car on Suburban Street). ©Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy Cheim & Read, New York
Mark Klett Re-photographs Barcelona
Like I said, photography is the season's strong suit...and it's also the subject of this exhibition, albeit with a twist. In collaboration with the Barcelona Photography Archive, American photographer Mark Klett re-photographed the city. What does that mean? He selected old archival photos, located the exact vantage point, and took the same picture again. Uusually decades (even more than a century) separate the two images, often to surprising effect. His panoramic city views are shown alongside the original photos. At the Arxiu Fotografic de Barcelona through May 19.
Aleksandr Sokurov at MACBA
An unusual cinematic proposal: a series of films by Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov (best known for Russian Ark and Faust) projected on the museum walls. Visitors can wander from room to room, selecting what they wish to watch – either a film in its entirety or different, individual scenes – thus constructing their own personal edit of the images. The MACBA is showing the director's Military Series and Elegy of a Voyage, meditations on power, war, destruction and identity. Through May 20. |
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