Bill Viola gets autumn going

Ten years ago, Bill Viola (New York, 1951) re­ceived Cat­alo­nia’s In­ter­na­tional Prize, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment’s most pres­ti­gious award. Yet, it has been some time since the artist had an ex­hi­bi­tion here. That will change this au­tumn when La Pe­dr­era will have a ret­ro­spec­tive of the mas­ter of video art’s ca­reer. And, the ex­hi­bi­tion ’Mir­rors of the Un­seen’ (Mi­ralls de l’in­vis­i­ble), from Oc­to­ber 4 until Jan­u­ary 5, will not only be on dis­play in the iconic mod­ernist build­ing, but will also go to other cul­tural venues in Barcelona (Palau de la Música and Liceu) as well as around the coun­try (Bòlit art cen­tre in Girona, Vic’s Epis­co­pal Mu­seum and the Montser­rat Mu­seum).

Screens, al­beit in a dif­fer­ent con­text, will also fea­ture in an ex­hi­bi­tion at Barcelona’s Cen­tre of Con­tem­po­rary Cul­ture, the CCCB. From De­cem­ber 18 to May 3, ’Video games’ (Video­jocs) will ap­peal to peo­ple of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions, as it cov­ers the evo­lu­tion of video games from when they first ap­peared in the 1970s until today.

It is not easy to over­shadow the name of Bill Viola, but if there is one artist who can, it is Pi­casso. The painter’s mu­seum in Barcelona has two ex­hi­bi­tions run­ning si­mul­ta­ne­ously (from Nov 8 to Mar 15) that look at one of Pi­casso’s least known facets: writ­ing. One ex­hi­bi­tion deals with sur­re­al­ist poet, Paul Éluard, with whom he shared a spe­cial friend­ship and a mu­tual ad­mi­ra­tion. The other fo­cuses on the great painter’s po­etry and its con­nec­tion to his art.

Sound also fea­tures in the new sea­son, with the Fun­dació Miró pre­sent­ing ’Sound Art?’ (Art sonor?), an ex­hi­bi­tion that shows the in­flu­ence of sound on 20th- cen­tury art (Oct 24 to Feb 23). With work by Kupka, De­lau­nay, Kandin­sky and Klee, there is no short­age of big names. Sound ap­plied to art ob­jects also fea­tures at Barcelona’s con­tem­po­rary art gallery, Macba, which fo­cuses on the work of Greek artist Pana­gi­o­tis Vas­si­lakis, known as Takis. The artist, who died in Au­gust, used sound, with light and elec­tro­mag­netic en­ergy, to stim­u­late his ex­per­i­men­ta­tion with the lan­guage of art. Takis runs from No­vem­ber 22 to April 19. Be­fore that, the gallery opens an ex­hi­bi­tion on Oc­to­ber 18 (until Mar 8) de­voted to Char­lotte Pose­nenske (1930-1985), a Ger­man Jew­ish artist who in the 1950s and ’60s frus­trated spec­u­la­tors in the art mar­ket by sell­ing her works for the price of the ma­te­ri­als used to make them.

As usual, Cata­lan art has a lower pro­file in the large gal­leries, apart from MNAC, which knows its remit well. There should be recog­ni­tion for the work Aurèlia Muñoz (1926- 2011) did in tex­tile art. The ex­hi­bi­tion in Cat­alo­nia’s fore­most gallery (Oct 24 to Apr) is in part thanks to do­na­tions from her fam­ily. Mean­while, MNAC will have a ret­ro­spec­tive of Oriol Vi­la­puig: ’Formes d’oli i aigua’, from No­vem­ber 28 to April 26.

The Fun­dació Vila Casas never turns its back on Cata­lan art, and has three ex­hi­bi­tions in its Es­pais Volart venue from Sep­tem­ber 26 to De­cem­ber 15. One fea­tures the work of sculp­tor Arístides Mail­lol and the pho­tographs Frank Hor­vat took of Mail­lol’s ter­ra­cotta pieces. An­other fo­cuses on 20 large-for­mat pieces Lídia Masllorens made be­tween 2014 and 2019. And the third fea­tures the pri­vate col­lec­tion of Va­len­cia’s Ars Ci­te­rior. Also, from Oc­to­ber 7, the Can Framis venue opens the ren­o­va­tion of its per­ma­nent col­lec­tion (of ex­clu­sively Cata­lan paint­ing) to the pub­lic.

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