The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) shows part of its artwork in the exhibition ‘MACBA Collection 31’, where you can see how art has evolved since the 60s and how expressionist painting has developed to become conceptual art through the work of 50 international artists. The Banco Sabadell Foundation is a member of the MACBA Foundation patronage, and collaborates with the Museum’s activities.
‘MACBA 31’ questions different forms of conflict in today’s world, it reflects on the relationship that art has with itself and its potential for questioning reality, and it reclaims sensory experimentation, corporeality and the experience of time as fundamental conditions for artistic practice.
In this exhibition, you can see work by Hans Haacke, Piero Manzoni, Àngels Ribé, Muntadas, Cildo Meireles, Joan Jonas, Esther Ferrer, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Marcel Broodthaers, Octavi Comeron, Harun Farocki, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jordi Benito, Dan Graham and David Lamelas, amongst others.
Experience, time and conflict
The exhibition offers a series of artistic itineraries built around three main subjects: experience, time and conflict.
Experience, by experimenting with nature’s elements and processes, sensory perceptions and efforts to visually see phenomena and physical changes that escape the human eye have been the focus of art since the 1970s, and this is evident in the pieces included in this section. Entrevendo (1970/1994) is one of the installations that you can visit to have a multi-sensory experience by Cildo Meireles, which invites viewers to live a synesthetic experience, placing two ice cubes into your month before going inside a truncated cone-shaped horizontal structure where hot air is being circulated.
Foto: La FotogràficaTime, sensory experimentation implies working with the body in a form of art based on action and movement, with time as a decisive factor. This part of the exhibition includes performances such as those by Babette Mangolte, which incorporate movement as prime artistic material, whilst the installations of David Lamelas and Hans-Peter Feldmann and the explorations by Francis Alÿs, Frederic Amat and Martí Anson, use time and duration as a field of research.
Foto: La FotogràficaConflict features some of the realities that are common to the contemporary world, such as conflict, borders and migration, shown through artists such as Carlos Garaicoa, Marcel Broodthaers, Étienne Chambaud and Pere Noguera, who investigate the idea of walls and maps, and Pedro G. Romero, León Ferrari and Alice Creischer, who uncover certain forms of violence in recent history.
