In real time
- Culture Folder
- Exhibitions
- Oct 21
- 4 mins
Catalan museum heritage has largely been built thanks to private collectors. This is the case of the collection belonging to the textile businessman Rafael Tous, the founder of Metrònom, an alternative exhibition space that now comes to the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) thanks to the donation made by the art collector himself, just one year ago. Visitors can already see the collection in the exhibition In Real Time. The Rafael Tous Collection of Conceptual Art.
Catalan museum heritage has largely been built thanks to private collectors. This is the case of the collection belonging to the textile businessman Rafael Tous, the founder of Metrònom, an alternative exhibition space that now comes to the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) thanks to the donation made by the art collector himself, just one year ago. Visitors can already see the collection in the exhibition In Real time. The Rafael Tous Collection of Conceptual Art.
Curated by Antònia Maria Perelló, curator and head of the MACBA Collection, and Clàudia Segura, exhibition curator, the exhibition proposes a journey through the conceptual practices generated in Catalonia during the 1970s and 80s. Presented as a temporary exhibition, the works comprising In Real Time. The Rafael Tous Collection of Conceptual Art will gradually be incorporated into the MACBA Collection to enhance the narrative of the permanent exhibition A Brief Century.
Closely tied to Metrònom, a space created in 1980 by Rafael Tous, the exhibition becomes a generational witness of a number of artists who worked on the sidelines of conventional circuits, often also far from the powerhouse that is and was Barcelona, and that facilitated the vibrancy of hybrid experimental artistic practices in music, performance and site-specific installations. The collection allows us to look back and take stock, since it includes artists who were just starting out and who are currently some of the best known artists within our borders and beyond. The integration of the Tous collection in that of the MACBA allows international affiliations to be generated that link Catalan art with what was done at the same time abroad.
Conceptual art is a set of plural practices whose common denominator is the desire to give precedence to research and the process, an art that takes place in the present, “in real time”.
An art that takes place in the present
So far we have talked about conceptual art. Perhaps we should devote a few lines to explaining what we mean. Or, better still, start with what it isn’t. It is not a cryptic and elitist art. It is not an art that is difficult to comprehend. It is a set of plural practices whose common denominator is the desire to give precedence to research and the process, an art that takes place in the present, “in real time”, as the title of the exhibition tells us.
With works by 28 artists, the exhibition is structured around six core concepts. It starts with action art, one of the preferred languages of conceptual artists. The body becomes an expressive medium. Blowing, drawing, observing or combing one’s hair are also works of art, as Frederic Amat from Terrassa teaches us. The interaction with nature comprises the second section, in which we find projects directly linked to the land and the landscape that put forward a new relationship with the environment. This is the case of Vol ras [Flying Low], by Fina Miralles, or Acumulació, integració [Accumulation, Integration], by Àngels Ribé. The exhibition continues with works that are a critique of consumerism and its offshoots using irony, parody and subversion. The piece by Eugènia Balcells SupermercArt [SupermARTket] is iconic. Fourthly, we find artists who defended art as a tool for social transformation. From different political stances, they condemned discrimination against women – Eulàlia Grau –, militarisation – Francesc Torres – or the lack of historical memory – Francesc Abad –. In tune with the emergence of postwar visual poetry or the theses of theorists such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ferdinand de Saussure, we find works by the artists Antoni Llena, Jaume Xifra and Jordi Pablo, among others, who explore language, semiotics and visual poetry. To conclude, we find poetics and practices of the object with the muddy works of Pere Noguera or the povera pop art of Benet Ferrer.
Some of the works from the 1980s are already part of MACBA’s permanent collection, A Brief Century, a conceptual legacy of the trends initiated in previous decades. Aesthetic and metaphysical reflection – the idea of a double, a mirror, a clock – are the basis of the installations by Francesc Torres or the Cicatriu a la Matriu collective. At the same time, in the MACBA Chapel you can see No hay Replay [There Is No Replay], by Carlos Pazos. And set in its original location, in Metrònom, we find Les portes de Linares [The Gates of Linares], by Jordi Benito.
In Real Time. The Rafael Tous Collection of Conceptual Art
MACBA. From 14 May 2021 to 9 January 2022
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