REPRODUCTIBILITAT 2.0. COL·LECCIÓ MACBA

The “Reproductibilitat” series presents public and private collections in different exhibitions and phases with the aim of offering channels for knowledge and research of the evolution of the artistic image using photography, avant-garde filming practices, video art and electronic media.

This new display is based on the collection of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona ­MACBA, ­the works of which have hardly been seen in the Balearic Islands, a circumstance which, as well as allowing us to exhibit the work of relevant creators, contributes to continuing the in-depth exploration of our educational and training line.

“Reproductibilitat 2.0. Colección MACBA”, curated by Nekane Aramburu, is one more step in this series, covering a fundamental period in the use and consolidation of image in movement for creative practices. The curatorial project is based on the influence of experimental film propositions on certain – basically North American – creators, and highlights works with the common denominator of the influence of avant-garde film, video technology and space-time investigation applied to landscape and the body.

The exhibition is an assembly of works in single-channel format from the MACBA collection without really entering into the analysis of the media and the milestones of the pioneers, but rather focussing on showing the influence of the first happenings and the Fluxus movement, the conceptualism of the ‘seventies and the appropriationism of the ‘eighties in creators who subsequently laid down modes and methods of conceiving and understanding art today.

In the exhibition discourse aims we stress how the dematerialization of art and the practices that used the moving image influenced the production of contemporary culture and the visual arts. In addition, the selected works allow us to delve into the discoveries made by the temporary structure of audiovisual recordings, thus advancing into fundamental issues on the ontology of the gaze, new relationships with spectators, the dialogue between the camera and the body or the passing of internal and external time before the mutation of a world and beings in a permanent state of transformation and questioning.

All of the pieces belong to a period which extends from the ‘50s to the ‘90s; the first one is a 16 mm work, In the street, byHelen Levitt, Janice Loeb and James Agee, filmed in 1945 and 1946 and first aired in 1952, and the most recent one is the recording of the performative action by Matt Mullican, Matt Mullican under Hypnosis, from 1996. Crossings and links between creators and works that will allow for new discoveries and interpretations, like Fresh Acconci, derived from The Red Tapes, the legendary 1976 work by Vito Acconci, revisited in 1995 by Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley.

Download the exhibition brochure