Critical Episodes (1957-2011)
Sponsored by the Fundación AXA, the Museu d'Art Contemporani in Barcelona (MACBA) presents the exhibition entitled Critical Episodes (1957-2011). MACBA Collection. This selection of works offers some antecedents of what is known today as systemic crisis. With more than 200 works by 64 artists, the show is articulated in six episodes: One Must Avoid Content Like the Plague; Art from the First Globalization; Fissures; Voyeurism, Fetishism, and Narcissism; Work, Power and Control; and Déconnage. These episodes unfold across all levels of the museum, even leading into the public space.
Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Fundación MACBA—an institution that celebrates a quarter of a century building the museum's collection—this exhibition is articulated on a series of episodes that can be viewed independently from each other and which frame social and political transformations in the immediate context of the crises that mark the progress of contemporary art.
One of the central episodes of the exhibition borrows the phrase by art critic Clement Greenberg "One must avoid content like the plague" to recover a self-criticism in painting, initiated during the 1960s, concerning an art that would strictly appeal to individual perceptions.
This ambit emerges from a revision of the pictorial genre and approaches some artistic practices that struggle to understand the contemporary social reality. Art from the First Globalization shows the result of this historic process. The third episode, Fissures, focuses on the idea of the subject. It questions the criteria with which we construct our world vision and asks how to unlearn that which we have already learnt. Also connected to contemporary subjectivities, Voyeurism, Fetishism and Narcissism delves into the new visual regime of a world used to the conventions from TV and movies. Lastly, Work, Power and Control centers on new ways of life and the systems of production connected to advanced capitalism. Déconnage is screened in this context. It is a document that recovers the figure of Catalonian psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles in the 100th year of his birth.
The exhibition includes works by artists like: David Lamelas, Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tàpies, Vito Acconci, Cildo Meireles, Sergi Aguilar, Andrea Fraser, Peter Friedl, Joan Hernández Pijuan, Hélio Oiticica, Jorge Oteiza, Marc Pataut, Perejaume, Raymond Pettibon, Gerhard Richter, Dieter Roth, Allan Sekula, Dorothée Selz, Richard Serra, Andreas Siekmann, and Susana Solano, among others.
The show will remain open to the public until January 6, 2013.
