This weekend marks the Barcelona Gallery Weekend, an initiative of the Art Barcelona association that annually marks the opening of the art gallery season and which in its current edition presents 27 exhibitions, six in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat and one in Santa Margarida i les Monjos, near Vilafranca del Penedès: that of Ignasi Aballí in Palmadotze.
If we start the tour through Ciutat Vella, we will find two attractive proposals. On the one hand, Joan Fontcuberta continues his research on the photographic image in the exhibition Jardins de pols, which he presents at Àngels Barcelona. From old photos damaged by humidity and colonized by fungi, he unfolds a discourse on the life cycle of photographs, which he equates to that of organic life. As for fertile photographic ruins, there is the antecedent of El jardí d’humus, by Manel Esclusa, a splendid exercise in creative iconophagy. But Fontcuberta is also impeccable at assigning meanings to images, or questioning them. First, he presents images of living bodies (fungi) that devour images, just as – Fontcuberta points out – on the internet it is images that devour bodies. And in the second part artificial intelligence intervenes, and then it is some (falsified) images that devour other (true) images. His fake, digital flowers and plants link to his 1984 analogue spoof Herbarium.
We must also celebrate the return of Dis Berlin (1959), after more than ten years of absence in Barcelona. The Parés room has recovered this Castilian painter, sometimes described as a neo-metaphysician, who owes his artistic name to two of his favorite musicians: Lou Reed (his album Berlin ) and David Bowie (his initials D.B.). More references?… Pedro Almodóvar is one of the main collectors of Dis Berlin, whom Emmanuel Guigon – director of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona – got right, in his presentation at the Parés, when he related him to Pandora and the holandés errante, an eccentric film that had an air between classic and stridently modern. In the absence of Ava Gardner, in Berlin’s work we find good painting, as well as play and mystery.
There are many interesting proposals in the Eixample. Firstly, Jordi Alcaraz’s splendid exhibition in Majoral, which is his first solo exhibition in this gallery. The selection includes very successful works, in different materials and formats. Two paintings-sculptures completed this year are particularly ambitious: The Mechanism of a Sundial (diptych), which occupies nearly nine square meters of wall space, and Drawing at Night (I). Alcaraz (Calella, Barcelona, ??1963) is one of the contemporary Catalan artists best represented in European collections and anyone who visits this exhibition will probably understand why.
Very close to Majoral is the 3 Punts collective and Lola Lasurt’s proposal with ceramist Esther Guillén, in Joan Prats. Marc Domènech exhibits only until September 22 Fields of silence, a selection of abstract paintings that approach monochrome, with significant variations, from Palimpsests by Georges Noël to a large format by Vicenç Viaplana or a minimalist sequence by Joaquim Chancho. A similar contemplative and silent atmosphere is offered by the large-format drawings presented by Patricia Dauder at ProjecteSD. For their part, the Zielinsky and Marlborough galleries agree in their demand for Latin American artists: the Guatemalan Sandra Monterroso and the Brazilian Anna Bella Geiger, respectively, the latter accompanied by Pedro Geiger. Without losing the feminine and anti-colonial thread, we can visit the exhibition of the Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili at ADN, still recent from her exhibition at the Macba. It includes the installation The magic lantern project, mainly video. And in another, smaller room, splendid drawings by Abdelkader Benchamma are exhibited, under the title Structures et éclats. There are more bursts than structures.
Without leaving the Eixample, we can approach the galleries Víctor Lope (Cesc Abad) and RocíoSantaCruz (Oriol Vilapuig), to link with the Trafalgar Street area, from Artur Ramon Art to the collective retrospective of the new Taché Art Gallery, passing through Dilalica, Bombon and LAB 36. In l’Hospitalet (fifteen minutes from Catalunya metro station) six interesting shows are presented, especially those by Martín Vitaliti at ethall and Berta Cáccamo at Ana Mas Projects .
