ConferencePainting after Progress by Miquel Mont

• Date: May 14
• Time: 7 p.m.
• Venue: Auditori
• Free activity with prior registration

At Es Baluard Museum, as part of the “Thinking about Painting” series, we are organizing a new event to reflect on the practice of painting and its processes through the work of artist Miquel Mont.

In his talk, the artist will offer a transversal journey through his career, presented as an open reflection on his way of understanding painting, in different parallel series, without hierarchies or stylistic preferences. He conceives all of this practically from the manual gestures and visual acts that construct his works, in addition to incorporating the context of the exhibitions.

Mont will address notions that have profoundly changed our way of perceiving painting, as an “image” or “device” to evoke the ideas that underpin it. Painting is cosa mentale, according to Leonardo’s famous dictum, and it takes on particular relevance in our time, in which images are omnipresent. These circulate today in an incessant flow, enhanced, if not directly generated, by algorithms. They are also imposed on us as perfect vehicles for the widespread commodification inherent in our neoliberal economy, while developing an increasingly complex relationship with the truth of representations.

This lecture is part of the series of exhibitions entitled “Nachleben. Painting as Conceptual Art,” which aims to contribute to the understanding of recent art history and explore the intrinsic nature of painting, drawing on some of its vicissitudes and deviations. In its first chapter, “Nachleben” includes the work of Miquel Mont.

Miquel Mont (Barcelona, ​​1963) moved to Paris, where he has worked and resided ever since. From then until the 1990s, his works became three-dimensional objects. His work focuses on exploring the treatment of painting from a formal perspective, particularly with regard to space and its three-dimensionality. Industrial materials are presented bare, highlighting their roughness and the economy of means that characterizes the artist’s work. Methacrylate and wood become tools to enhance the presence of color in painting, often through monochrome surfaces that break the presentational framework to expand and engage with the space in which they are presented.

He has exhibited at the Centre d’Art la Panera in Lleida; in France, in venues such as the Galerie Aline Vidal and the FRAC Alsace; and also in Austria. Along the same lines, his works can be found in numerous collections, such as the La Caixa Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts of Álava, and the Mumok. In 2015, the Suñol Foundation dedicated the exhibition ‘Never Enough’ to him.