print February 2001

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Though articulated around a single new work, Món visible (Visible world), 2000, Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s MACBA exhibition of the same name took on a selectively retrospective character. Indeed, the imposing centerpiece (realized in an edition of three and shown simultaneously at ARC Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) acted as a survey in itself: Fourteen vitrine-like light-box tables lined up in the dark displayed 2,800 slides taken by the duo since 1987, images recalling stock tourist snapshots that range from sunsets to farm animals to the Sphinx.

This show, the artists’ first in

print May 1989

Carmen Perrin

This group of works by Carmen Perrin reveals the artist’s extraordinary ability to synthesize, on the one hand, her established directions (Conceptual art, arte povera, and post-Minimalism), and on the other, her ability to meld a complex cultural dualism—Swiss and Latin American—into a compelling cohesion that is as sophisticated as it is simple.

The title of each piece is a straightforward listing of the materials used in the work’s creation: they include slate, stone, wood, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, cement, fiberglass, and plastic. In most cases, the materials maintain their industrial

print April 1989

Miquel Navarro

Much recent art points to the endurance of an intense desire for abstraction, although redefined according to the varying contexts in which it functions. The old process of eliminating the formal attributes of an object in order to remove all signifiers and achieve the maximum plastic literalness loses its meaning if the discourse that assigns the signifier stops being an absolute frame of reference and its boundaries are dissolved in the natural processes of interpretation. Nevertheless, the artist now, more than ever, is looking for plastic purity. But instead of mercilessly reducing the

print February 1989

“La Raó Revisada”

With a title as suggestive as it is ambitious (“La Raó Revisada,” Reason revised), Stephen Schmidt-Wulffen has curated a group show that brings together the work of seven West German artists. Diverse in their modes of expression, they all seem to share a similar intent, one aimed at overthrowing the schematism of Minimalism’s stringent agenda. However, this attitude results not so much in the relaxation or abandonment of that movement’s rigorous creative propositions as in the belief that the positivist cultural discourse on which Minimalism is based is obsolete, and that it became so the moment

print December 1988

Muntadas

Muntadas’ latest installation was held in a part of town where the urban landscape is particularly rich in architectural, sociological, historical, and political resonance. It used the symbolic energy of the building housing the installation—a Baroque construction situated on the noisy and bustling Las Ramblas—as a starting point. A passageway running through the building connects Las Ramblas with the beautiful market of the Boquería. This passage had been closed to the public for several years until Muntadas reopened it, creating a vital symbolic link between two parts of the city. The building

print October 1988

Manuel Saiz

Few contemporary artists have been able to transcend historical precedents without maligning them. Yet Manuel Saiz has been able to acknowledge the important changes in art of the past few years, drawing on a collective creativity and transforming it for his own purposes. Although he works as a landscapist in the grand tradition, he has claimed a territory that is all his own. His landscapes are circular and dynamic, simultaneously subjective and objective; he reclaims a tradition of the artist as both interpreter and creator. To Saiz, everything is fodder for the artist, but at the same time

print Summer 1988

Joan Rom

Born in 1954 and trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, Joan Rom had his first solo exhibition in 1983 at the Centro de Lectura de Reus, south of Barcelona, and another there in 1987. Rom’s work has been discussed principally as a site of multivalent meanings and ambiguities. Although such an analysis is valid, his work is governed less by ambiguity than by the absence of figuration.

Materials, forms, and objects are tools for Rom. He combines them with a minimum of intervention, and without emphasizing the tensions among them, thus avoiding any disjunction or decontextualization of the disparate

print March 1988

Eva Lootz

Eva Lootz was born and educated in Vienna, where she received a strong intellectual foundation, but her work has long been well known in Spain. She moved to Madrid in 1968 and had her first solo show there in 1973. From the beginning, Lootz adopted an approach to materials that favored the existential and analytic over the esthetic, producing work that affirmed Descartes’ famous syllogism in its inverted form: “I am, therefore I think.” Her approach is somewhat process-oriented in that it involves, as she puts it, a strategy of dynamic intervention in what she sees as the continuous flux of

print January 1988

Perejaume

Perejaume had his first one-person show in Barcelona in 1978 when he was barely 20 years old. Although he is still quite young, his work shows the conceptual strength of a mature artist. In part this comes from the work's profound connectedness to physical reality and to Catalan culture, without being literal or uncritical. Perejaume's intense identification with his surroundings continues to emerge in his work with transparent clarity. He finds his inspiration in the dynamic “collage” of contemporary Catalonia, with all of its contradictory influences.

Perejaume does not pursue any single

print October 1987

Chérif and Silvie Defraoui

Swiss artists Chérif and Silvie Defraoui, well-known in central Europe for both their artistic and pedagogical work, have long exerted a strong influence on the more radical intellectual circles of Barcelona. Their creative vigor is based on a tendency toward heterodoxy and irony, as well as an eclectic approach free from doctrinaire stylistic restraints. The exhibition/installation here, entitled La Querelle des images (Quarrel of images, 1986)—originally mounted last year in Toulouse—focused on a celebration of the image, reconsidered and redefined.

Combining a rigorous but playful geometry

print September 1987

AN ENCOUNTER WITH A SECRET: THE SCULPTURE OF SUSANA SOLANO

A SOLID ACHIEVEMENT IN NEW sculpture is emerging here in Spain. Production is by no means confined to the major centers; as in the past, the outlying regions, including the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean coasts, have shown enormous vitality. The new sculpture does not reflect a unified movement of conscious departure from what went before: in most cases, its impulse seems specific to the individual artist. In the particular case of Catalonia, the new work is not even that disruptive, for this is an area with a long tradition of avant-garde art, from Joan Miró through Antoni Tapies and

print September 1987

Aureli Ruiz; Gabriel; Pep Agut

It has been relatively difficult, in the last five years, to find artists—whether recognized or not—with a truly authentic impact. Of course there have been new artists in Spain, but most of them have emulated foreign artists, while others, with a suspect fidelity, followed the style of successful young local artists who have achieved international recognition. In spite of this lack—the result, most probably, of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the art market—the local critics would agree that there definitely exists a Catalan creative ferment, however irregular.

Some of this could be seen in the

Gloria Moure