A few days ago we commented that September is the month of return where it seems that all the machinery gets going after the summer lethargy. And it is also one of the months where one can enjoy such grateful and vital festivals as the one organized by the Art Barcelona association: the Barcelona Gallery Weekend, an event that allows us to feel the pulse of the most current art and place the city on the world's artistic map.
Although the kick-off is this September 15, the Barcelona Gallery Weekend extends until the 19th of the same month, but we will still be able to enjoy the exhibitions after these days. However, the complementary activities will only take place during the celebration of the event itself.
This year, despite still being in a pandemic situation, they have managed to break their own record with the participation of 33 art galleries, not only from the capital, but extending to L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Santa Margarida i els Monjos and Sitges, thus fulfilling their objective of making visible the work of galleries as spaces that generate culture and knowledge, places of experimentation and discovery that allow connection and encounter between artists, collectors, public and institutions. Spaces open to the public. A goal that acquires special relevance in the current context, not only for trying to return culture to its place, but as a catalyst for a new post-confinement force and a celebration of life through art.
The festival aims to make visible the work of galleries as culture-generating spaces open to the public70 artists from 20 different countries present their proposals in free and open-access exhibitions, in which both the professional public and the general public will be able to find their space, and enjoy an agenda full of activities for each profile. But if we cannot attend in person, in this edition of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend, digitalization and virtuality will allow us to enjoy from home not only virtual 3D tours of the participating galleries through the digital art platform RedCollectors, and observe the exhibited works in detail, but also be present in interviews with gallery owners and artists on TheArtTalks platform. And of course, we will also be able to buy works, either in the galleries or on the RedCollectors and Artland web platforms, and receive online advice if needed. So we have no excuse to miss anything.
As the variety and richness of proposals is astonishing, a series of free guided tours have been organized, the ARCO Gallery Walks with the support of the ARCO Foundation, for small groups to attend the exhibitions accompanied by a professional and with first-hand information from the curators, gallery owners or artists of each space. These tours move through the galleries of the same neighborhood and can be attended with prior registration. And for the second consecutive year, the BGW Familiar is also organized, a circuit aimed at families with children between 8 and 12 years old.
Of the projects and participating galleries of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend, we want to highlight some especially attractive projects:
EIXAMPLE
- ADN Galeria- Indignadas by María María Acha-Kustcher, and It's Time to Go Back to Street by Marinella Senatore. Two empowering proposals where protest and the strength of the collective are key to their discourse.
- Galeria Cortina- the work of master Chillida in this exhibition called El espacio interior for those who do not want to take risks.
- Imaginart Gallery- presents the exhibition Ni sumisa ni devota, by artist María Eugenia Trujillo, which was censored in 2014 at the Santa Clara Museum in Bogotá for incorporating embroideries of female body parts into apparently religious objects.
- Mayoral- its collective exhibition Nauraleza abstracta. Zóbel con Miró, Tàpies y Hernández Pijuan contextualizes the work of Fernando Zóbel in relation to great Catalan abstract painters, among others.
- Victor Lopez Arte Contemporáneo- La vida es sueño is the perfect excuse to tell us Malgosia Jankowska's vision of still life as a pictorial motif full of symbolism.
- Alzueta Gallery- YEE YEE is the horseback cry of the cowboys who inhabit Gabrielle Graessle's paintings, full of a naive energy framed within the Dirty Art movement, very close to David Lynch's pictorial work.
- House Of Chappaz- another powerful collective exhibition is Contact / Together Again. Political Poetics of HIV where works from the last 30 years dialogue around the AIDS virus and its fight against stigmatization.
BORN
- Bombon Projects- in Because yes. In a blink artists Dorian Sari and Rosa Tharrats "offer us an unexpected place, a kind of journey that levitates between tenderness and violence". Arising as a love story, the work of both functions together as if it were one.
- Galeria SENDA/LAB36- Yago Hortal reinvents himself in Again? fleeing from the success formula to pursue his desire to experiment and grow; and in Welcome to La Ricarda! two talents such as painter Bea Sarrias and audiovisual director Morrosko Vila-San-Juan unite in a particular homage to Casa Gomis under the lyricism of their disciplines in communion.
- Pigment Gallery- Diego Ferrari delves into his vision of a city and a moment in London: Space at the Centre 1994-2007 through his personal archive, to show us an intimate portrait of the generation of the Young British Artists in the city that saw them born.
- Galeria Valid Foto Bcn- the exhibition Debut of Alisa Sibirskaya's photography results in an almost mystical magic, where the theme of Siberian culture acquires a sacred character.
- Àngels Barcelona- with its experiment of defining itself from another gallery, the collective exhibition of Neither Raw Nor Cooked turns out better than expected, as it starts from the premise that it is from the Other that we can define what we believe ourselves to be.
- Sala Parés- in Espacio 2 we can delight ourselves with the fragmented intimacy of Confrontations by Dominika Berger and her pieces of face full of light.
- Chiquita Room- Memory Strata recalls the family stories hidden behind embroideries, and it is through the haute couture hand embroidery technique that a conceptual framework reflects on the fragility of memory.
- Alalimón- Vanesa Muñoz seeks in Sisyphus, escaping tragedy through physics the eternal return of her pieces, the infinite horizon, the abyss but so that we face it without fear.
L'HOSPITALET
- Ana Mas Projects- the proposal this gallery brings us takes us to the Yanomami people in Watori, by the hand of artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe.
- Palmadotze- the project presented by Mateo Maté in Canon seeks to transgress norms to break with that harmonic idea and disrupt the ideal.
- Out Of Africa Gallery (OOA Gallery)- in Police Brutality, Nigerian artist Bob – Nosa investigates the darkest side of the human soul with his work and captures it in works full of strength and provocation.