One wonders, as Tatxo Benet explains to us during the guided tour, if works that scandalize truly scandalize less when they are accompanied by other scandal-works. That is to say: if you are offended by seeing a video of a woman simulating fellatio on a banana or a sausage (Natalia LL, Consumer Art, 1973, censored in the National Museum of Warsaw) perhaps it will stop offending you if, very close by, you have a Jesus Christ painted as Ronald McDonald (McJesus, Jani Leinonen, which unnerved the Christian minority in Israel) or a female masturbation covered by Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and drawn in ballpoint pen (Juan Francisco Casas, O( H)ROMAo(H)MORTE, controversial in Madrid and Rome).
All together they keep each other company, they balance each other, they forgive each other. All together they are expiated and saved from their sin by Tatxo, a madman about the subject who had been looking for a space for a long time, and who has found it in Casa Garriga Nogués. The first time I entered, too many years ago, the Proa publishing house was there. Now the modernist-inspired building houses more than 200 works that, combined with the space of colored stained glass and twisted ceilings, are doubly dignified. An altar, an altarpiece, a confessional. Yes, a gallery of hells with all its capital sins.
It is risky, yes. The idea is as uncommon as it is sexy, as reckless as it is genuine and with an exceptional level of artistic quality. A good way to enter contemporary art, beyond the four basic things that can be tried to show us on Montcada street (a street that Tatxo had precisely explored to bring his museum), is to give it a narrative: each of these works has a story, and it is as important (or impactful) to see them as to hear them. To know what has happened to them, from where they have had to be removed, what blood has been shed for them or what position they have cost (in the case of La bèstia del sobirà present in the museum, seeing the king of Spain sodomized cost Bartomeu Marí his position at the head of MACBA). Just as many people approach classical music thinking about the narrative, about history, about how the world was understood in the 19th century and what that author meant by making that work and not another, a good way to approach an art as eclectic and sometimes difficult as contemporary art is by listening to its version of history. Its life. These works not only confess sins but, above all, accuse.
The host's favorite piece is a series of prayer rugs with high heels (Silence rouge et bleu, by Zoulikha Bouabdellah) that makes you fall backward. Saddam Hussein in formaldehyde evoking a work by Damien Hirst (Shark, by David Cerny), Franco in a Coca-Cola vending machine, reconsecrated hosts forming the word "Pederasty", Goya's not-so-capricious and very darkening Caprichos, Warhol's Mao, Picassian orgies… the selection and arrangement made by Carles Guerra, artistic director of the museum, together with the sense of visual experience that the Mediapro factory has, elevate the visit to the level of an international must and create a final aftertaste of pride, aesthetic pleasure, and transgression all at once. And, besides, it tells us that we have people with enough talent, money, and madness to place the most innovative claim in contemporary art of recent times, perhaps in the whole world, in the heart of the city. You leave applauding with your ears and saying thank you. Thank you, then. And applause.