Paula Rego @ La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

Paula Rego: Family Sayings
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
8 July - 8 October 2017

Heir to Goya’s expressionism and Hogarth’s mordant wit, the work of Paula Rego (Lisbon, 1935) has, over more than half a century, built an enduring fable on human nature. The artist’s paintings and drawings explore in detail how women organise spaces of historical disobedience against the cultural imaginaries imposed by the patriarchy.

The work of Paula Rego could be read as a great fable on human behaviour. Thus, the connections between dominion and dependency, anger in response to social injustices, the persecution of irreverent bodies and sexuality constrained by conservative moral standards are subjects that reappear cyclically in her paintings and imbue them with a certain existential character. In addition, Rego’s works establish an acerbic dialogue with history and the immediate present; they dispute the cultural legacy of the patriarchy; and they speak out against the aggressions perpetrated by the hierarchies of power. Over the course of her career lasting more than half a century, she has—through metaphors and broadsides, and by combining literary tales and personal experiences—created an energetic and anti-normative imaginary peopled with beings that leap from stupor to indiscipline, from coldness to violence.

Paula Rego’s artistic evolution is a veritable melting pot of disparities and reformulations. Her early pieces use an abstract language akin to that of Vieira da Silva and Dubuffet, while her later work, close to the School of London—Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Auerbach and Andrews, among others—should be seen as heir to the expressionism of Goya and the sarcasm of Hogarth, together with Daumier and Gutiérrez Solana, and in keeping with the unsettling atmospheres of Balthus and the refined obscenity of Klossowski.

Unlike earlier artists, however, Pola Rego is not only more open to other sources outside of painting—for example, the theatre, opera, popular narratives and film—but has also engaged in a kind of far-reaching exploration of the way women have organised their spaces of historical dissidence.

Family Sayings, which takes its title from the novel of the same name by Natalia Ginzburg, is an exhibition that examines six decades of Paula Rego’s work: a period that extends from her drawings of the 1950s to a number of recent projects and which includes her series on the subject of abortion, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, and Misericordia, by Benito Pérez Galdós, as well as the pieces inspired by the plays of Martin McDonagh.

Curator: Valentín Roma

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99. 08002 Barcelona
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat

Michael Snow @ La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

Michael Snow: Sequences
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
9 July - 1 November 2015

La Virreina Image Centre devotes a major retrospective to the Canadian artist Michael Snow.

Michael Snow: Sequences exhibits work from throughout his career, including many pieces never seen before in Europe, and reflects the wide range of media he has worked with: music, film, video, painting, sculpture, books and installations.

In all these media he explores the expressive possibilities of sound and image and challenges the vision/representation duality. His creative approach requires the active participation of the spectator, who is invited to see the object, perceive it, become involved with it. His compositions aim to direct attention in different ways and involve the viewer in the creative process. He breaks down boundaries not only by creating crossover pieces—both objects and images—but also by appreciating the space as a visual, plastic and sound element rather than a neutral container for creations.

The exhibition includes a programme of screenings, under the title Michael Snow, Sequences. A retrospective, that features a selection of the artist’s films. His film Wavelength, a landmark of avant-garde filmmaking eager to reflect on its own language, will be shown in the exhibition rooms of La Virreina Image Centre (screenings: 12.30 pm and 6 pm). In keeping with the artist's criteria, the rest of the programme will be screened at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.

Curator: Gloria Moure

MICHAEL SNOW: BIOGRAPHY

Michael Snow was born in 1928 in Toronto, where he currently lives. As a musician, he has played the piano and other instruments both solo and with several ensembles (most frequently with the CCMC of Toronto) in Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan. He has also released a number of recordings. His work as a filmmaker has been screened at festivals worldwide and can be found in several film archives, including the Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Royal Belgian Film Archives (Brussels) and the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), among others. In 1967 his film Wavelength won the Grand Prize at Exprmntl Experimental Film Festival in Knokke (Belgium), and in 1982 So Is This won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award.

He is also a painter and sculptor, although since 1962 much of his work has been photography based or holographic. His work in all these media is represented in private and public collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), MoMA (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne and Vienna), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts and Musée d’art contemporain (Montreal).

He has created video, film and sound installations, designed books such as Michael Snow / A Survey (1970) and Cover to Cover (1975) and carried out several public sculpture commissions, including Flight Stop at the Eaton Centre and The Audience at Skydome, both in Toronto.

He has had retrospective shows at the Hara Museum of Tokyo (1988), the Cinémathèque Française of Paris (1999), the Anthology Film Archives (New York) and the Institut Lumière (Lyon). In 1994 The Power Plant and the Art Gallery of Ontario, both in Toronto, put on simultaneous shows of his work in all media. Additional retrospective exhibitions have been mounted at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1967 and 1979) and the Musée d’art contemporain (Montreal, 1995), as well as at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Objects of Vision, Toronto, 2012) and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Michael Snow: Photo-Centric, 2014).

He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982 and a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres in 1995 (France). In 2004 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Paris.

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99. 08002 Barcelona
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat

Ai Weiwei at La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

Ai Weiwei: On the Table
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
5 November 2014 - 1 February 2015

On the Table. Ai Weiwei offers a comprehensive view of the artist's life and work through the display of a variety of artworks and materials, set up to match the scale of La Virreina Image Centre.

The exhibition aims to give an idea of the scope of Ai Weiwei's artistic career, from his beginnings in 1980s New York to his present-day status as the best-known and most influential Chinese artist in the world. Work by this media-savvy activist calling for greater freedom in China can now be found in leading contemporary art museums and collections worldwide.

Ai Weiwei makes use of a number of artistic practices, including photography and documentary film, sculpture, design and architecture, in operations that transcend formats and disciplines to create images that infiltrate and propagate through social networks and popular culture. In addition to several key pieces for appreciating this artist’s work, the show at La Virreina Image Centre also presents unseen work, new productions and installations by Ai Weiwei specially designed for this exhibition.

Curator: Rosa Pera

AI WEIWEI

Ai Weiwei is well known for his longstanding confrontation with the Chinese communist government and for his large-scale installations in leading contemporary art museums and events worldwide. He works on a global scale with any format and medium that comes to hand—or simply invents new ones.

A staunch defender in the struggle for freedom, he has used his work as a potent mouthpiece for speaking out against the unseen repression and censorship as China opens up to capitalist markets. As an artist, he strives tirelessly to raise critical awareness in society.

On the Table. Ai Weiwei aims to give a comprehensive overview of his work by exploring some of his best-known pieces alongside previously unseen work. Ai Weiwei makes use of a wide range of techniques—including photography, architecture, video, sculpture, graphic design, installations, objects and music videos, among others—but central to all his work is the role of the image as a construction and vehicle for reality. He then uses this to explore the tensions between truth and lies, evidence and ambiguity, control and freedom, politics, art, power and society.

Ai Weiwei sees art as a device for striking up dialogues within various contexts, comparing and contrasting different traditions and visions, negotiating, dissecting, projecting and sharing: like a table on which we can lay out our credentials and show our cards, discovering what is underneath and, if necessary, turning the tables.

Rosa Pera

La Virreina Image Centre and La Fábrica have prepared a catalogue to accompany the exhibition On the Table. Ai Weiwei. It offers an insightful rereading of the artist’s work and runs to 180 pages, including over 240 pictures of 42 pieces. The idea, design, editing and sequence of images were all personally overseen by Ai Weiwei himself. The catalogue also includes an interview with the artist in his studio in Beijing by Llucià Homs, director of La Virreina Image Centre, and an essay by Rosa Pera, curator of the show, entitled Image and Power in Three Movements and a Device.

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99. 08002 Barcelona
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lavirreina/en/

This Is Not a Love Song at La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

This Is Not a Love Song
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
22 May - 13 October 2013

La Virreina Image Centre presents This Is Not a Love Song, an exhibition that sets out to trace the genealogy of the relations between pop music and video-creation from the 1960s to today, with the emphasis on those moments in which there was feedback between the two manifestations as they explored the field of experiment, utopia and political incorrectness.

Since the 1960s, various generations of avant-garde artists have integrated into their production processes elements that are related with the attitudes and imaginaries of pop music. Artists of the calibre of Andy Warhol, Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, John Baldessari, Rodney Graham, Tony Oursler, Christian Marclay, Mike Kelley, Douglas Gordon, Jeremy Deller or Damien Hirst, and many more, down to today, have approached this genre in some of their most outstanding works, sometimes even collaborating with different rock bands or recording their own albums. Similarly, leading musicians such as John Lennon, David Bowie, Pete Townshend, Syd Barret, Brian Eno, Alan Vega, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and members of essential bands of the last two decades, like Sonic Youth, REM, Blur, or Franz Ferdinand all trained at art school before becoming professional musicians.

From this approach and bearing in mind that the origins of video-art run almost parallel to those of pop music, the project is divided into two sections:

1- Pop and video-creation. Shared genealogies

This section includes more than 30 significant works in the history of video art and experimental film from the 1960s to 2013 that are formally and conceptually related to the iconographies of pop and rock, with works by Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Yayoi Kusama. Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Christian Marclay, Douglas Gordon, Candice Breitz, Jeremy Deller, Mark Leckey, Jon Mikel Euba, Largen & Bread and others.

2- Music for your eyes. Visual arts and the aesthetics of the videoclip

This section is a journey through the history of the musical videoclip to review the careers of the most important authors of the last 40 years and their connections with contemporary visual arts and cinema and includes a programme of music videos by artists like Andy Warhol, Tony Oursler, Judith Barry, Robert Longo, Joan Morey, Damien Hirst, Ana Laura Aláez, Carles Congost, Pipilotti Rist, Dara Birnbaum, Joseph Beuys, Adel Abidin, Hugo Alonso, Charles Atlas, Marc Bijl, Olaf Breuning, Charley Case, Cheryl Donegan, Jorge Galindo i Santiago Sierra, Jesús Hernández, Bjørn Melhus, César Pesquera, John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald (Antarctica), etc.

Curator: F. Javier Panera

 This is Not a Love Song: Interfaces between Visual Arts and Pop Music

Exhibition Catalogue

Exhibition co-produced by Screen Projects / La Virreina Centre de la Imatge / Primavera Sound

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99 - 08002 Barcelona
http://lavirreina.bcn.cat/