Exhibitions & Fairs
Highlights of
Barcelona Gallery Weekend
1. Mayoral: Venezia 1958
A group exhibition that unites a group of works first shown in the Spanish Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1958. Designed as a commemoration of the gallery’s 30th anniversary, the exhibition shows works by a who’s who of Post War Spanish artists, and particularly their affinity with the prevailing trends in abstraction of the time, including abstract expressionism and the Informel. Works by these artists heralded international recognition for the emerging art scene of the country, at a time when Franco’s regime was interested in projecting a progressive and modern facade to the world. The exhibition includes important examples of works by Antoni Tàpies, Eduardo Chillida, Rafael Canogar, Manolo Millares, Antonio Saura and Manuel Rivera.
2. Ana Mas Projects: Irma Álvarez-Laviada, Material Circumstances
A group of minimal paintings and sculptures that share a sense of absence and isolation. Characterized by a formal simplicity and an array of raw and humble materials, the works are invariably linked to process and the manner in which the material becomes the central compositional motif. Foam panels, different kinds of processed boards, mdf, and various other construction products that are invariably hidden as part of the built or constructed environment come to the fore as layer, color and texture as they are incorporated, stratified, in the plastic works. The ‘paintings’—essentially flat panels of these materials—elegantly presented in high production value frames with a meticulous sense of finish, show their stippled and variegated substance as infinite fields, expanding beyond the perimeters to imply void.
3. Galeria Joan Prats: Juan Uslé, Unsettled
Unsettled, the title of this exhibition of new paintings by Uslé, continues the artist’s long investigation into the tenets of painting. Under this rubric, one implying instability, unease, or a kind of restless energy, the works themselves have no fixed inquiry. Variously resembling landscape, or vertical architecture, the works’ muted palettes form painterly stripes, strata which rhythmically pulsate on the surface. Applied so as to reveal the repetition of artist’s movement the works unfold both physically and temporally. According to Uslé, “Time is what we have left. I conceive it as a horizontal surface where past and future moments are deposited and transfigured. Many of my small works seem to go on, spread in space. They suggest a “landscape” – let’s call it this way – or space of multiple juxtaposed horizons.”
4. Galerià Zielinsky: Joaquín Lalanne, The fragility of the stage
A painting exhibition, also including some artist interventions on the gallery premises. Meticulous easel scaled paintings depict vignettes of proscenium type spaces, which upon close scrutiny deconstruct the high-minded classical culture on display within each. With witty trompe l’oeil artifice, the artist plays with scale, references both art history and popular culture (high and low) and shows us homespun play-stages made from cardboard and pins, cobbled together to resemble opera houses, grand palaces and wunderkammer. Echoing such luminaries as de Chirico and Magritte, Lalanne’s work is witty reverence executed with the deftest of touches.
5. ADN Galeria: 5994 is just a number
5994 is just a number, but also happens to be the exact number of days the gallery has been in business prior to the opening night of this exhibition, a commemorative show to mark the opening of ADN’s new premises. The show is a broad sweep, encompassing contributions from all the artists the gallery has worked with, some from the very beginning of the gallery’s inception in 2003, and of course many that have joined the gallery’s eclectic program along the way. An impressive exhibition attesting to the gallery’s keen eye and rigorous curatorial aesthetic.
Relevant related articles:
Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2019
Director of Barcelona Gallery Weekend, Interview
Barcelona Galleries at the Gallery Weekend