The Espai 13 at the Fundació Joan Miró is an exhibition programme of emerging artistic and curatorial practices set up to meet Joan Miró's wish to create a space where new generations could present their work. Since its launch in 1978 in the foundation's Espai 10, over 45 years ago, our programme of emerging art has built up an extensive background in promoting local, national and international talent. Over the years, Espai 13 has become an important turning point in the artistic and professional careers of many of its participants, for whom it has represented a major advance in terms of their professionalisation and recognition within the art world.
As an observatory and barometer of the changes in emerging art, each year Espai 13 entrusts a curator with developing a programme of solo exhibitions based on a theme related to contemporary artistic practice. These exhibitions emanate from original, newly produced projects designed specifically for the season and the space. In 2026, the independent curator Alejandro Alonso Díaz will take over from Carolina Jiménez. Following a year of exhibitions stemming from considerations on the relationship between artists and their surroundings, as well as ideas of place and context, this year's programme will be framed by Barcelona's status as the European Capital of Architecture. The exhibitions will focus on current debates around the notion of space, through artistic practices that consider how such discipline is determined by the energy flows that cut across social spaces, infrastructures, and the programmatic functioning of institutions
Stories, told through words, pictures or gestures, may be the most enduring form of communication known to humans. More than simply a listing of events, a story can transcend barriers of cultural diversity, geography and time period to explain how or why something came to be.
Implicit Sound is the second cycle of exhibitions for Espai 13 curated by multidisciplinary artist TRES. The title of the project not only stresses its connection with the previous Espai 13 cycle, Explicit Silence, but also reflects visual artists' growing interest in using sound in their work.
The exploration of silence is a constant factor in contemporary art. Twentieth-century artists from Kasimir Malevich and Marcel Duchamp to Yves Klein and Gary Hill - plus a great many others - have exemplified silence, reduction, nothingness, pause, absence, disappearance, invisibility, emptiness, non-action and negation. Silence, however, is still an open space with a lot of artistic potential to be explored.
Cycle of 5 exhibitions curated by Jorge Díez, commencing on 2 October.
This season the Espai 13 at the Joan Miró Foundation is opening its doors to young Japanese artists. Through the five exhibitions in the cycle titled “Kawaii! Japan today”, viewers are invited to discover some of the astonishing works by very young artists that provide a portrait of present-day Japanese society.
Films, installations, photographs and videos produced by Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains.Since it opened in 1997, Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, has been taking in 24 students from around the world every year.
Curator: Montse BadiaIn these increasingly standardised times in which the mass media holds sway, our individual space of action and definition is becoming more and more limited and subject to strict codes.
Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appearCurator: Montse BadiaOne of the principal features of present-day artistic proposals is that they raise more questions than they answer when it comes to the mechanisms needed to make us change, or at least question, our perception of things, our perception of the world in which we live and our perception of our own selves.
A project by Grazia Quaroni and David RenaudLast season the cycle in the Espai 13 was presented in the traditional manner, i.e. with one individual exhibition following another.
Curator: Grazia Quaroni"Every game is a system of rules.What gives meaning to the rules is the desire to play."Roger Caillois, Les jeux et les hommes, 1958Art and play are both a necessity.
2000-2001 Season25th Anniversary CycleCurators: Mònica Regàs, Ferran Barenblit and Frederic MontornésThe joint curatorship by these three art critics is partly a consequence of the history of the Espai 13.
1999-2000 SeasonCurator: Michy [email protected] Oasis in the Blue Desert is a metaphor for the reality of Puerto Rico as seen from the country itself by six of its young artists, who have been invited to reflect on the subject of transit and cultural exchange.
