The exhibition Shared Studios. Three Case Studies presents the work, production, and learning dynamics that arise in shared studio spaces among artists in the Barcelona art scene.
The exhibition Broken Games is a selection of 13 photographs by different authors: some were taken by Joaquim Gomis’ father, others by Joaquim Gomis (1902-1991) himself, and one by Gomis’ wife, Odette Cherbonnier. What prompted this exhibition was a desire to present materials from the family albums in the Gomis Archive held at the National Archive of Catalonia, which evoke summertime joie de vivre as well as fun vacation and leisure time.
Miró-ADLAN: An Archive of Modernity (1932-1936) reconstructs the key role of the group of artists and intellectual known as ADLAN (Amics de l’Art Nou [Friends of New Art]) in introducing modernity to the Barcelona of the 1930s, during the years of the Spanish Republic. While in major European cities avant-garde movements had the support of critics and collectors, here modernity needed the impetus of an enthusiastic group that sought to regenerate Catalan culture and adopted Joan Miró as its leader in the promotion of new art.
In this selection of photographs-most of which convey low temperatures, were taken at dusk or at times of low luminosity-, we find elements that can both open or close a space or dissolve its boundaries and contours. Mayoral photographs places that might seem hostile, places where time has been suspended, a time that does not seem to exist and that the locations do not allow to situate or signify.
This selection of photographs by Joaquim Gomis captures a historic and personal moment of suspended time and a sense of emptiness, of collective post-traumatic shock, of phantoms and absences, of dejection and very slow reconstruction. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, new collective confrontations were erupting which were often the result of the dismantling of European ’empires’ and the beginning of the Cold War. Coinciding with the solo exhibition of Nalini Malani (born in Karachi, Undivided India, in 1946) at Fundació Joan Miró, we delved into Gomis’ archive to find photographs from those two years that would convey the prevailing mood in Catalonia right at the moment when what was known as British India was declaring its independence. A declaration that came with a territorial partition that brought about a wave of sectarian violence that, like in Spain, left a legacy that still needs reckoning and reconciliation.
The Indian artist Nalini Malani, the winner of the 2019 Joan Miró Prize, presents a selection of works from her entire career, in which feminist thought and the condemnation of violence are ever-present.
In the late 1970s, after Franco died, Barcelona photographer Antoni Bernad took portraits of the leading personalities in Catalan culture from Joan Miró’s generation.
Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan, the winner of the first edition of the Han Nefkens - LOOP Barcelona Award, presents a production filmed in the rural areas of the Mekong Delta.
The Sound Art? exhibition offers a critical interrogation of this category in art and presents an overview of the sonorisation of the art object from the late nineteenth century until today.
Turn it all turns is an educational project and series of four exhibitions that focuses on a range of processes and protocols that enable us to understand, relate to and experiment with our immediate surroundings. By playing with languages and meanings, the series aims to throw up critical insights that make us question the codes that shape our perception.
Thanks to Joan Miró’s generosity, Barcelona’s Club 49 invited the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to perform in Sitges in 1966. Joaquim Gomis, who was one of the club members, was able to photograph the American troupe, which included John Cage and David Tudor, at the famed La Ricarda residence during a break, as well as at a rehearsal prior to their perfomance.
In 1988, the NorthAmerican Steve Reich, one of the leading figures of minimalism, composed a piece about the Jewish Holocaust. Almost thirty years later, this video work by Beatriz Caravaggio confers visual life on the score interpreted by the Kronos Quartet.
