A season packed with art

More pho­tog­ra­phy

There will be more pho­tog­ra­phy at the re­cently in­au­gu­rated Fun­dació Mapfre, be­gin­ning the year with an ex­hi­bi­tion of Hi­roshi Sug­i­moto (from Feb­ru­ary 17 to March 5), which will con­tinue with one on Bruce David­son (from May 26 to Au­gust 28). The two ex­hi­bi­tions at the Casa Gar­riga Nogués will show two very dis­tinct ap­proaches to pho­tog­ra­phy, the first being more artis­tic in focus and the sec­ond doc­u­men­tary.

La Vir­reina Cen­tre de la Imatge, mean­while, will in March fea­ture the pho­tographs of Jorge Rib­alta, and Arts Santa Mònica will have Nous re­lats fo­togràfics (from May 5 to July 3), dis­play­ing the re­sults of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion into how the world of pho­tog­ra­phy has de­vel­oped in re­cent years in both Cat­alo­nia and Spain in gen­eral, in terms of new for­mats, the evo­lu­tion of pho­to­jour­nal­ism as well as ex­cur­sions into sur­re­al­ism. In fact, the arts cen­tre at the end of the Ram­bla has a packed pro­gramme this sea­son. Per­haps the most in­ter­est­ing is the ex­hi­bi­tion cur­rently run­ning until April 10, Pa­raules pix­e­lades, the first large-scale ex­hi­bi­tion in the world de­voted to dig­i­tal lit­er­a­ture. In the sum­mer, Fermín Mugu­ruza will cu­rate Black is Beltza (from June 21 to July 31), an analy­sis of the graphic novel cre­ated by the writer Harkaitz Cano and il­lus­trated by Jorge Alderete, which tells of an in­ci­dent in which black peo­ple were banned from tak­ing part in a New York fash­ion show. While yet an­other pro­ject at Santa Mònica will be Nunes, més enllà del temps (from July 14 to Oc­to­ber 2), about the film di­rec­tor from the Es­cola de Barcelona who died in 2010.

Not much is yet known about the of­fer­ing from the Museu Pi­casso, al­though the gallery's web­site has an­nounced that its ex­hi­bi­tion of the year will be Cu­bisme i guerra. El cristall dins la flama (from Oc­to­ber 20 to Jan­u­ary 29), an ex­hi­bi­tion that fo­cuses on the sur­vival of the Eu­ro­pean artis­tic avant-garde in Paris dur­ing the First World War and its re­sponse to the pain and dan­ger brought about by the con­flict through cu­bism, with its val­ues of con­trol, co­her­ence and in­tegrity. Pi­casso, Juan Gris and Diego Rivera will be the main artists fea­tured in the ex­hi­bi­tion, al­though it promises to be a ver­i­ta­ble fes­ti­val of top-class artists and their work.

Of the few ex­hi­bi­tions ex­pected to cause a wide­spread stir, Caix­aFo­rum will open one on March 11 de­voted to the mas­ter­pieces of im­pres­sion­ism and mod­ern art from the Phillips Col­lec­tion. The Fàbrica Casara­mona will also focus on con­tem­po­rary art (El pes d'un gest is cu­ra­tor Julião Sar­mento's eval­u­a­tion of the Gul­benkian, Macba and La Caixa col­lec­tions, from Feb­ru­ary 12 to May 1), on ar­chae­ol­ogy (Ming: l'im­peri dau­rat, from June 15 to Oc­to­ber 2) and, nat­u­rally, pho­tog­ra­phy (Sorprènme! Fo­tografies de Philippe Hals­man, from July 13 to No­vem­ber 6).

Nor has Macba so far re­vealed much about its pro­gramme this sea­son. How­ever, the star ex­hi­bi­tion for the first part of the year will be on US artist An­drea Fraser, whose work uses text, in­stal­la­tions, video, per­for­mances and doc­u­men­tary ma­te­r­ial to focus on ex­is­ten­tial is­sues and the in­ter­nal con­flicts within art and the var­i­ous in­ter­ests of its main play­ers (artists, col­lec­tors, gallery own­ers, pa­trons, di­rec­tors and the pub­lic). An­other high point of Macba's year as an­nounced so far will be the long-awaited ex­hi­bi­tion by An­toni Mi­ralda.

Duchamp at the Miró

The Fun­dació Miró's sea­son will fea­ture the pre­sen­ta­tion in April of its newly ex­tended and im­proved col­lec­tion. As for ex­hi­bi­tions, the foun­da­tion will have two main ones: one by Ig­nasi Aballí, the Joan Miró 2015 prizewin­ner (from June 30 to Oc­to­ber 2) and, to end the sea­son on a high point, will be Final de par­tida: Duchamp, els es­cacs i les avant­guardes (from Oc­to­ber 27 to Jan­u­ary 22), an ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sent­ing the game of chess as a con­tin­ual leit­mo­tif of the progress of mod­ern art in the spheres of leisure and in­no­va­tion.

As for the CCCB, the arts cen­tre has an in­ter­est­ing pro­gramme with a spicy au­tumn ex­hi­bi­tion: 1.000 me­tres quadrats de desig, which will deal openly with the con­nec­tion be­tween ar­chi­tec­ture and eroti­cism. In the spring, (from March 22 to July 31), Africa and its con­tem­po­rary de­sign will be the pro­tag­o­nist in an ex­hi­bi­tion that is cur­rently doing fan­tas­ti­cally in Bil­bao's Guggen­heim mu­seum. And in the sum­mer, the CCCB will get on board with the Any Llull with La màquina de pen­sar. De l'Ars Magna a l'art com­puta­cional (from July 13 to De­cem­ber 11).

The hand of Car­les Guerra will begin to make it­self felt in the Fun­dació Tàpies through a num­ber of pro­jects. Among them will be ex­hi­bi­tions de­voted to Harun Farocki (from June 1 to Oc­to­ber 16) and to Oriol Vi­lanova (from No­vem­ber 10 to March 5).

Fol­low­ing the sum­mer break, the Museu del Dis­seny will focus on ce­ram­ics in ar­chi­tec­ture, while the Museu de Cul­tures del Món, will in June begin an ex­hi­bi­tion about Barcelona's colo­nial re­la­tion­ship with Equa­to­r­ial Guinea. Mean­while, the Fun­dació Vila Casas will con­tinue to cham­pion Cata­lan art as al­ways with Ramon En­rich, Jaume Mer­cadé and, cur­rently, Una col·lecció per a un vi­atge. Pro­moció d'Ar­qui­tectes Barcelona 1960 (until April 31).