Francesc Torres has expressed his desire to donate his archive to the MACBA Study Centre. A first showing of it is the installation Francesc Torres. The Hermetic Bell: Space for a Non-Transferable Anthropology , for which the artist has collected a number of objects that are key to his creative process in a newly created work, which he will also donate to the Museum. From 9 March to 11 September 2018, the Museum Tower will be occupied by an installation specifically designed by Torres for that space.
Ten years after the presentation of his solo exhibition Da Capo at MACBA (2008), Torres offers us the possibility of taking active part in a new exhibition project that is a real challenge, both for the Museum and for the artist himself. The aim is to present a set of essential, iconographic and objectual referents that for years have accompanied the artist in his work, the complexity and coherence of which should allow us to approach his vital and critical universe.
Based on the concept of geological stratum or archaeological sediment, Torres intends to recover and make visible the elements and connections between the experiences, images and objects that have accompanied him from childhood.
‘I suggest that what we officially disseminate as artists in the social arena is only an imitation of everything that, for one reason or another, we consider problematic, too real, unfiltered, a reflection of what has made us what we are as social, political and artistic subjects. Our work is supposed to be the mirror image of ourselves, but like everything a mirror reflects, as if it were a studio photograph, it suffers from the excesses of lipstick and makeup, of the side that flatters us the most and supposedly disguises the implicit ridicule of showing what we are not in every social projection. I am not saying that the work of an artist is necessarily a lie, although it is; it is also a great truth but one remodelled by the tailor of language and symbolic manipulation. It is proof of the servitude of all civilised people to the rules of polite society demanded by the barbarians.’
The work of Francesc Torres is halfway between the proposals of those artists who, in the sixties, carried out the first attempts to elaborate an institutional critique, and those who, already by the eighties, tried to escape from an omnipresent art market by producing works that were only viable within the space of the museum.
It is widely recognised that, in this framework of contemporary practices, Torres was undoubtedly one of the driving forces behind the medium of installation, precisely at a time when neo-Expressionism and the so-called New Spirit in painting were predominant. His installations, close to sculpture, and often incorporating audiovisual elements that fill them with all kinds of references, reflect critically on power, politics, violence, memory and the culture of our time.
Francesc Torres. The Hermetic Bell. Space for a Non-Transferable AnthropologyMuseu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona - MACBA Main address:
Museu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona - MACBAWells Fargo CenterPlaça dels Àngels 108001Barcelona, SpainMuseu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona - MACBAWells Fargo CenterPlaça dels Àngels 108001Barcelona, SpainFrancesc Torres has expressed his desire to donate his archive to the MACBA Study Centre. A first showing of it is the installation Francesc Torres. The Hermetic Bell: Space for a Non-Transferable Anthropology , for which the artist has collected a number of objects that are key to his creative process in a newly created work, which he will also donate to the Museum. From 9 March to 11 September 2018, the Museum Tower will be occupied by an installation specifically designed by Torres for that space.
Ten years after the presentation of his solo exhibition Da Capo at MACBA (2008), Torres offers us the possibility of taking active part in a new exhibition project that is a real challenge, both for the Museum and for the artist himself. The aim is to present a set of essential, iconographic and objectual referents that for years have accompanied the artist in his work, the complexity and coherence of which should allow us to approach his vital and critical universe.
Based on the concept of geological stratum or archaeological sediment, Torres intends to recover and make visible the elements and connections between the experiences, images and objects that have accompanied him from childhood.
‘I suggest that what we officially disseminate as artists in the social arena is only an imitation of everything that, for one reason or another, we consider problematic, too real, unfiltered, a reflection of what has made us what we are as social, political and artistic subjects. Our work is supposed to be the mirror image of ourselves, but like everything a mirror reflects, as if it were a studio photograph, it suffers from the excesses of lipstick and makeup, of the side that flatters us the most and supposedly disguises the implicit ridicule of showing what we are not in every social projection. I am not saying that the work of an artist is necessarily a lie, although it is; it is also a great truth but one remodelled by the tailor of language and symbolic manipulation. It is proof of the servitude of all civilised people to the rules of polite society demanded by the barbarians.’
The work of Francesc Torres is halfway between the proposals of those artists who, in the sixties, carried out the first attempts to elaborate an institutional critique, and those who, already by the eighties, tried to escape from an omnipresent art market by producing works that were only viable within the space of the museum.
It is widely recognised that, in this framework of contemporary practices, Torres was undoubtedly one of the driving forces behind the medium of installation, precisely at a time when neo-Expressionism and the so-called New Spirit in painting were predominant. His installations, close to sculpture, and often incorporating audiovisual elements that fill them with all kinds of references, reflect critically on power, politics, violence, memory and the culture of our time. Book tickets
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