Published on http://artmag.saatchigallery.com/miraldas-stateside-perceptions/ on February 22, 2017 

If there’s one lesson to learn from travelling abroad, it’s the fact that all of us are the product of one culture or another, the product of specific national histories, ways of thinking and behaving heavily determined by where we have lived much of our lives.
When artists in particular travel, they take with them a baggage train of personal truths and beliefs and often apply them to their perspective of the new place they are visiting and experiencing.

So did Antoni Miralda, born in Terrassa, Spain in 1942, who is currently enjoying a solo exhibition at MACBA (the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) until April 2017. MIRALDA  MADEINUSAis curated by Vincent Todolí and was developed by the institution in close collaboration with the artist. The show documents the projects Miralda completed in the States from 1972 until the late 1990’s; photographs, installations, sculptures, drawings and manipulations made of all sorts of materials.

In the ’70s Miralda moved to New York City where he gave his life away to performances and happenings involving loads of people. Sangría 228 West B’Way was a march of sorts against property speculation organised in collaboration with the neighbours and shopkeepers of the Big Apple’s Ninth Avenue. In Houston in 1977, he presented his quite literal Breadline (currently re-created inside MACBA’s display) and later took Wheat and Steak to Kansas City in 1981, another epic and unsettling food parade.

Following these events, from 1984-1986, Miralda established and artistic and social experiment called International Tapas Bar and Restaurant, also currently reincarnated with offerings of cocktails and sharing plates reflecting the original menu on Fridays and Saturdays through the run of the exhibition.

During the late ’80s the artist pieced together his Honeymoon Project, a work representing the symbolic wedding of the Statue of Liberty and the Columbus Monument in Barcelona (the two famed public sculptures do in fact lie on the same latitude, and are thus, it’s nice to think, in love).

And finally there’s Miralda’s Santa Comida, holy food, perhaps the most interesting and open installation in the whole show. Afro-Caribbean culture is picked apart, its icons, patterns and miscellaneous artifacts have been placed in the chapel outside the Meier Building, where everybody, taking their shoes off, walks on a wonderful rug made of many hues and images.

Food culture (www.foodcultura.org/) is easily named one of the main themes in Miralda’s body of work, but it’s not the most important component. The participatory nature of his projects, his general attitude towards life and its relationships and colours, the irony always heavy in his sentiments, such are the elements that leave the viewer fascinated and pleased to witness such diversified examples of one man’s vocation now gathered together.

 Published on /artmag.saatchigallery.com/montjuic-cemetery-a-place-to-rest-your-soul/ on February 13, 2017 ​

There’s few creepier things than walking about places where the dead gather, but such is not the case when you step into the Montjuïc Cemetery. This astounding necropolis could easily be considered a peaceful open-air sculpture garden with an impressive amount of exquisite statuary to admire.
Strolling through the paths of the hallowed space, first opened March 17, 1883 by the city of Barcelona, is mesmerising. Important local families would hire the best architects and sculptors of their day to bestow a little artistic immortality to their dearly departed.

During the nineteenth century, Barcelona went through an economic metamorphosis, growing vastly in population, and therefore had an increasing demand for burial grounds. Today, the cemetery contains over one million burials and urns of cremated ashes within 150,000 plots, niches and mausoleums.

The early monuments inside were inspired by Classical and Gothic styles, while others clearly display an Art Nouveau influence. In Catalonia, Art Nouveau takes the name of Modernisme (as it was first known in the Catalan language), and is one of the main visual traits that helps create the Barcelonean aesthetic.

The talents whose commemorative work can be seen within the cemetery were architects like: Joan Martorell, Antoni Rovira i Rabassa, Leandre Albareda, Josep Vilaseca, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Miquel Pascual i Tintorer, Juli Maria Fossas, Ubaldo Iranzo, Emilio Sala Cortés, Pere Garcia Fària, Enric Sagnier, Jaume Bayó i Font, Bonaventura Bassegoda i Amigó, Salvador Soteras i Taberner, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Antoni Maria Gallissà, Josep Maria Jujol, Tiberi Sabater, Camil Oliveras and Josep Domènech i Estapà…

…and they involved visionary sculptors such as Josep Llimona, Enric Clarasó, Rossend Nobas, Josep Campeny, Rafael Atché, Manuel Fuxà, Josep Reynés, Eduard Alentorn, Josep Clarà, Eusebi Arnau  and Josep Maria Subirachs.

It truly is a treasure trove here, of memories, mysteries and masterpieces.
So make sure not to just swing by Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia when you mull over which historical monuments to visit while in Catalonia, because Barcelona is full to bursting with such beautiful gems.

Published on http://artmag.saatchigallery.com/ladies-of-surrealism/ on February 6, 2017

 These days there are lots of art shows, all around the globe, that are seriously considering the profiles of women who have effectively contributed to art history, not only as muses or lovers of male geniuses, but as creators of new, fascinating, self-supporting pieces of art worthy of study.

 Following this trend, the Galeria Mayoral in Barcelona is presenting something related to this subject, Dones Surrealistes. Curated by Victoria Combalia, it gathers together artists such as Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Maruja Mallo, Angeles Santos and Valentine Hugo. All these unique, charming and mysterious women have had a link with the territory of Catalonia, and until the first of April it will be possible to appreciate some selected works — lent by private collections and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya alike — in this location in the Eixample.

 Without doubt, the name that is known best nowadays is Frida (who was in love with the catalan Josep Bartolí). Here she appears in a multiple self-portrait, showing herself in the three different stages of life. In another piece, she looks like she is drawing herself in different positions simultaneously, as in a futurist painting.
 Another masterpiece is a drawings of horses by Leonora Carrington, a surrealist painter best known for her personal relationship with Max Ernst (she dated him before the war in Europe, but then she had to flee to Mexico, where she became one of the most recognised artist of her time). Leonora portrayed magical landscapes filled with fantastic animals, bringing them to life from the British folk stories of her youth. These memories of her homeland followed her all the way to Central America (she passed through Catalonia while escaping from Europe and luckily found her promised land in Mexico City).

 A close friend of hers is also featured in the show, Remedios Varo, who lived in Barcelona with her Catalonian lover. Dona o l’esperit de la nit (Woman or Spirit of the Night) of 1952 is one of her paintings that captures your eyes with a female protagonist sporting an intense and deep look, pouring out of a body of elongated, murky shapes.

 Then there are the pictures of Dora Maar, well known as one of Picasso’s lover, less known as a photographer and painter in her own right. And those of Lee Miller, a good looking and talented woman who ventured into the field of portraiture and documentary photography during World War II. In addition to being a lover to Man Ray, Miller was married to the surrealist painter and historian Roland Penrose.
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 There is a common quality underlying the images chosen: an enigmatic sensibility directed towards dreamlike worlds, an attention to details and those lost in them, and a strong love for life in all its declinations.

Published on /artmag.saatchigallery.com/peter-hujar-speed-of-life/ on February 1, 2017 

Displaying almost 160 photos, mostly on loan from the Morgan Library in New York, the Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona is showcasing the work of the American photographer Peter Hujar to the European public with an impressive exposition held at the Casa Garriga i Nogues (a wonderful Modernista building in the neighbourhood of the Eixample).
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Peter Hujar was born in 1934 and died prematurely in 1987, but his shots are things meant to remain in the history of photography; the intimate and outstanding portraits he took of the subcultural world of his time depicts figures like Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, Fran Lebowitz, among many others well notable characters straight out of the hazy days of New York City during the ’70s and ’80s.

The show is curated by Joel Smith from New York’s Morgan Library, where the exhibition will be held in one year’s time. It is very likely one of the largest retrospectives ever put together to honour this artist, who was aiming to capture images conveying idea of closeness between the photographer and the subject chosen, with total absence of shame. His nudes all have a psychological quality and a strong sense of “singularity” (Hujar was interested in the people he was taking portraits for being original and unique in themselves).

His images are presented as a living body of work still open to artistic interpretation and in no particular chronological order. Hujar, who worked in fashion photography as well (Irving Penn and Richard Avedon inspired him), had spent two extended periods of time in Italy studying filmmaking in Rome. These experiences were extremely formative for him since they enhanced his ability to look for a story and his observer’s attitude, so that the portraits he shot would look like an outtake from a story, with a clear narrative hidden below the surface.

Hujar also circled somewhat in the orbit of “Andy Warhol World” and had a lot of East Village artists living around his studio. But he always tended to avoid figures of conventional fame and fortune, rather preferring those who, at the time, experienced alternative forms of success, before a smaller but more significant crowd.