White walls, high ceilings, open-plan spaces. These days, many of the galleries opening in Barcelona share the same look: small white cubes. But behind this seemingly simple appearance lies a whole statement of intent: to make the gallery a transparent, permeable space, for artists and public alike. For artists, the white walls are a blank canvas on which to experiment, create and let the imagination run free. For visitors, the gallery aims to be an open door to contemporary art: a place to walk in, look, ask questions and discover. Free, accessible spaces that shouldn't be reserved for experts, but open to anyone curious about contemporary art.
And yet, that door isn't always so easy to walk through. How many locals know what goes on behind the door right next to their building? How many know they can walk in, no appointment or ticket needed, just to look around? And, above all, how many truly see a gallery as a space that belongs to them too?
It's precisely for this reason that, once a year, Barcelona's galleries decide to throw open all their doors at once. From 17 to 20 September, Barcelona Gallery Weekend reaches its twelfth edition, with 25 galleries in Barcelona and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, simultaneously opening 38 exhibitions featuring more than fifty artists.
“Barcelona Gallery Weekend was born, more than a decade ago, out of the need to connect art galleries with the public,” recalls Mariña Á. Pino, director and coordinator of the cultural event. It's a goal that, according to Pino, still holds true: “despite Barcelona Gallery Weekend's high turnout — last year we counted as many as 17,000 visitors —, there are still many locals who don't know how galleries work, that they're open free of charge all year round, with exhibitions that change every few months.”
Barcelona Gallery Weekend also acts as an opening ceremony for the city's cultural season. After summer, Barcelona regains its cultural rhythm, and the different disciplines start rolling out their programmes. In theatre, this moment even has its own name: Catalunya Aixeca el Teló, the gala organised by ADETCA that kicks off the new season. In the world of galleries, Barcelona Gallery Weekend plays a similar role: “a festive, collective event where all the galleries open at once, join forces and build a single artistic voice out of many voices,” Pino notes.
An artistic scene in transformation
But when 25 galleries open their season at the same time, the result isn't just a wide array of exhibitions, but also a first snapshot of the city's art scene. “If any single trait defines this season, it's change and transformation,” Pino says: new spaces joining the circuit, galleries relocating, projects seeking new international connections, and artists reshaping their language.
These changes are already visible in this year's Barcelona Gallery Weekend programme. The first clue to this transformation appears on the map. Although Barcelona's most established gallery circuit still runs through Ciutat Vella, the Eixample and Gràcia, one area is drawing much of the new activity and emerging as a fresh hub for the art scene: the Trafalgar axis.
It's no coincidence that this is the area where the three galleries joining Barcelona Gallery Weekend's programme for the first time this year are clustered: Sorondo Projects, Escat Gallery — which has just expanded its project with a new experimental space in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat —, and, a few streets away, Al-Tiba9 Gallery, a gallery originally from Algeria with a base in the Catalan capital, which is showing Dance Calligraphy, by Pavel Korbička, a monumental light installation built from the movement of dance.
For these galleries, joining Gallery Weekend is also a way to raise the project's profile and strengthen its ties to the local art scene. That's the case for Sorondo Projects, which opened just over two years ago. “From the gallery, we've worked hard to position ourselves within an international circuit, putting Barcelona in dialogue with the Latin American artists we work with. But it's also very important for this work to find a reception in the city where we want to build our community, Barcelona,” notes Juliana Sorondo, founder and director of the gallery.
Its participation in Barcelona Gallery Weekend represents, in this sense, “recognition of the work and the road travelled so far.” For this first participation, Sorondo has chosen a show that reflects the space's values, Juliana notes, with Ejercicios de permanencia (in the general programme), which brings together María Elena Pombo and Miguel Braceli, two artists who live in New York but maintain a direct connection to Venezuela, with artistic work centred on the experience of displacement and the need to preserve that bond. The gallery is also taking part in the FLASH programme, which gathers short-lived pieces that can only be seen during the four days of Barcelona Gallery Weekend, with Nikolay Morgunov.
But Barcelona Gallery Weekend also lets you read the movement in the other direction: not only when a new gallery arrives in Barcelona — like Kali Gallery, which landed in the city this September from Lucerne but isn't yet part of the programme —, but also when a gallery that has grown up here makes the leap abroad. That's the case for Chiquita Room, founded in 2018 by Laura González in the Sant Antoni neighbourhood, which opened a second location in Brussels this September.
The expansion doesn't mean leaving Barcelona behind, but expanding the project. “It's a single project with two different spaces, which lets us experiment more, programme more and reach further,” González notes. The new location also opens the door to new connections with the market and with other artists and players on the European scene: “The goal is to bring the artists we work with in Barcelona into contact with those in Brussels, and for that connection to work in both directions,” González notes.
The connection between the two cities also takes shape in the programming: the new Brussels location launched with Once We Existed, a dialogue between Laia Argüelles Folch and Pieter Laurens Mol. These are, in fact, the very same artists with whom Chiquita Room is taking part in Barcelona Gallery Weekend: Argüelles Folch presents Lo que te vol, and Mol headlines the FLASH programme with hook, Line and Sinker.
The future is inside the galleries too
But there's a third layer to this transformation readable in Barcelona Gallery Weekend: the change isn't just physical — new premises, new spaces, galleries expanding — but artistic too. It shows up in the exhibitions, in the artists arriving, and the themes galleries choose to focus on. Across the 38 shows in the programme, identity, displacement and memory emerge as recurring concerns, but there's no single thematic thread tying them together, nor one language for tackling them: the works range across painting, drawing, installation, textiles, photography and light. These 38 exhibitions are rounded out with guided tours, talks and other activities that let visitors dig deeper into the shows and bring the artists closer to the public.
All this is what makes Barcelona Gallery Weekend far more than a simple season opener: it is, above all, an early sketch of what's to come. Over four days, new spaces, artists, projects and new international connections converge on a single map, offering a glimpse of where the city's art scene is heading.