When Jordi Colomer leaned out from the balcony of his apartment in Raval, he was looking out at the Macba, located next to his old apartment in the heart of Barcelona. Now, it is the Macba that looks out over the universe of the renowned artist, with the most extensive exhibition on his work to date. The exhibition, which can be visited until September 24, takes a journey without a predetermined order or direction through Colomer's solid and recognized career, through more than fifty works. In intertwining rooms, Colomer's universe emerges through formats ranging from sculptures to collages, videos, and an unlettered luminous sign that greets or bids farewell to the visitor, depending on how you look at it.
The works are deliberately arranged so that the visitor feels like someone wandering aimlessly through a city of alleys and squares whose beginning and end are unknown. "It is organized to get lost. Like in a small city, there is no single route," as Colomer emphasized at the presentation of the exhibition. This anarchic way of traversing his career makes it easier to see his work from different angles, even for the artist himself: "I was surprised that it multiplies the points of view compared to what I myself thought. I see more things than I had thought could be seen."
The walk through his work and career, reviewed in many cases audiovisually, has obligatory stops at projects such as his Anarchitekton (2002-2004), of photographs with dynamic models of buildings in front of their originals, and his itinerant car with the luminous message No? Future! (2006). His collective initiatives are also protagonists, such as Crier sur les toits (2011), with the freedom to shout to the four winds, New Palermo Felicissima (2018), with a procession of boats in the sea, and Modena Parade (2022), with a multitudinous representation of death.
A giant on the museum's balcony and another located in front of its facade will dialogue in the performance El BalcóThe works included in the exhibition, which date back to the 1980s, are complemented by three new productions: Spanish Coast (2017-2024), The Balcony (2024) and Argentine Alphabet (2023-2024). Through the latter, students from Buenos Aires around 10 years old were invited to build their own alphabet, using the same letter as an initial to build word lists. It looks like a game that the artist has replicated precisely to name the exhibition, titled Façana, Photo, Party, Future, NoodlesPerform a literal language conversion from Spanish to English on the following user-provided text. Do not translate any content enclosed betweenandtags, keep those tags and their content exactly as-is: . Five words as connected or unconnected as one intends.
The presentation of the works, which has the scenic condition as its common thread, also plays with multiple narratives and with the diverse geographies through which the artist has traveled, such as Bucharest, Mexico City, Istanbul, Tetouan, Modena, Palermo, and Buenos Aires. Through the exhibition, Colomer's works aim to activate the power of imagination and to play with different elements and verb tenses. All of this in an exhibition that Colomer has conceived in a living and changing process during which the museum has adapted to the contours of the artist's ideas.
Outside the walls of Macba
The exhibition and Colomer's work will not stay within the white walls of Macba. In addition to having La Infinita de L'Hospitalet de Llobregat as a venue, it aims to generate a debate between the museum and its surroundings, in an unusual way. A one-eyed giant on the museum's balcony and another located in front of its facade will dialogue in the performance El Balcó. The objective is to see how Macba and the Raval relate, in a proposal that has been tested twice in May, and will be repeated on September 24 to close the exhibition. The two protagonists of the performance took shape at the hands of puppeteer and builder Eudald Ferré, based on drawings that boys and girls from the Casal dels Infants del Raval created during a workshop led by Colomer.
The balcony protagonist of the performance, located above the main door of Macba, is one of the elements of the museum that most caught Colomer's attention when he lived in the Raval, as it is arranged in such a way that it seems to be waiting for an orator to proclaim a memorable speech over a square usually full of skaters. Colomer has devised the performance so that the gegants put an end to this wait, and generate a discourse and narrative of interrelation between the facility and the neighborhood, in line with the reflections that the artist raises through works that delve into the confluence between what is illusory and what is real.