Art, Two Points. MACBA – La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona

Last 18th July the exhibition ART, TWO POINTS opened in Barcelona (Spain).

Joan Rabascall. Atomic Kiss, Acrylic painting on canvas, 1968. Art, Two Points. MACBA, Barcelona

With a new and innovative assembly, this exhibition is divided between the two museums of the City: MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) and “La Caixa” Foundation. Both foundations rescue works from their permanent collections for us to think about together, through the works of more than 80 national and international artists, on the tensions that have led to the eruption of modernity vanguards in Barcelona as a backdrop.

The starting point is the two world exhibitions held in the city in 1888 and 1929. The MACBA collection invites us to review the transformation that the city experienced in recent decades. Through the photographic works of Jean-Marc Bustamante, Xavier Ribas and Manolo Laguillos we discover the deep urban, architectural, economic and human renewal that happened in Barcelona and the consequent social and territorial fractures that all change and renewal processes entail.

In the ground floor of the museum we can discover artists such as Chillida, Deseoso (1954), Antonio Saura, Cota (1959), Manolo Millares, Cuadro 61, Jorge Oteiza, Jose Maria Sicilia, Flor Negra VIII (1954),  Jose Maria Breto, Celebración en El Lago (1984), Miguel Barcelo, Temporada de lluvias (1990), etc.

The work in the MACBA ends in the 80s and 90s, when art becomes the world of the physical object, its symbolism and its memory, its uses and meanings, with a work of Juan Muñoz, La Naturaleza de la ilusión visual (1994-95), a return to the object.

On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall disappeared and also the division of Europe we used to know. This date marked the beginning of a series of changes that affected Europe and are still alive in our society. We have to think also to the market liberalization and the big progress in new technologies and the Internet that made it possible to speed up the process of globalization.

Claes Oldenburg. Mistos ( Model ) Sculpture. Art, Two Points. MACBA, Barcelona.

The art we are going to visit inside “La Caixa” foundation reflects all these changes. I would like to start talking about Tony Ousler and his Figura flamenca (1974). Tony explored the influence of the means of communication in the training of identities, behaviors and psychology of humans. His work is a symbol of cultural myths of society.

Many works of the period express a clear tendency toward defining individual existence through the pain and trauma – mental distress, the pain caused by difference, by the body or by incurable disease – as in the case of Feliz Gonzalez-Torres, who talked about the dualism between opposing ideas: absence and loss, disintegration and dispersion, private and public.

The work of Sue Williams, Aislados y alargados sobre verde (1996) tackles questions of identity, difference and vulnerability. Cindy Sherman and her photographic self portraits explored the meaning of the images we produce as a society, as well as a critical approaches to artistic practices.

Art, Two Points. MACBA, Barcelona

The installations of Joseph Beuys and Jannis Kounellis link the existentialist spirit of post-war period with the tension of visceral art that questions the old, aesthetic discourse defined by western, male, bourgeois values.

Art, Two Points, MACBA & La Caixa, Barcelona, through December 29 at La Caixa and through January 6 at MACBA