EXPLOSION

EXPLOSION

Carrer del Consell de Cent, 286 Barcelona, Catalonia 08007, Spain Thursday, January 11, 2024–Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Mayoral brings together works by Equipo Crónica, Juana Francés, Eulàlia Grau, Manolo Millares, Joan Miró, Antonio Saura and Antoni Tàpies, presented through the prism of two explosive scenes from Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinema.

deux femmes, arbres, oiseaux, étoiles by joan miró

Joan Miró

Deux femmes, arbres, oiseaux, étoiles, 1938

Price on Request

espectador-espectacle (spectator-show) by antoni tàpies

Antoni Tàpies

Espectador-espectacle (Spectator-Show), 1974

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 Mayoral brings together works by Equipo Crónica, Juana Francés, Eulàlia Grau, Manolo Millares, Joan Miró, Antonio Saura and Antoni Tàpies, presented through the prism of two explosive scenes from Michelangelo Antonioni's cinema. The eight pieces displayed dialogue with Zabriskie Point (1970) from "the imperious need to scream, to inundate surfaces and leave a mark".

Zabriskie Point (1970) contains explosions, but also emptiness and silence; a lack of definition that raises questions and, above all, a great visual strength that is reflected in an abstract form. According to Francesco Giaveri's curatorial statement, here we limit ourselves to juxtaposing, like a collage, certain authors who demonstrate a clear connection with the film, bearing in mind both the inhospitable location and the context in which it was filmed over half a century ago. The film thus confronts the Californian Death Valley's formless and ardent matter —which connects us to the matter informalism of Francés, Millares and Tàpies— with the fierce invasion of a pop objectivity that assails the urban landscape —linked here to the artwork of Equipo Crónica and Grau.

"Beyond useless discussions on figurative or abstract art, beyond all purist, fanatic, aesthetic or theoretical concerns, is the imperious need to scream, to inundate surfaces and leave a mark, to express oneself no matter how, revealing the energy potential of the being, to paint as a form of living, through the amorous or destructive image of the body [...], of an expanding whole or of a concentric dynamic." Antonio Saura

The film was able to anticipate and give shape to many present-day conflicts. In the two explosive scenes that can be seen in this exhibition there is counterculture, Utopia, free love and also capitalism channelled toward infinite consumption. In this respect, as Giaveri mentions, "the pop figuration of Eulàlia Grau and of the Equipo Crónica, with their icons of the most consumer-oriented America, confronts us with the bright colours of empty packaging [...]. Two representations of the pop universe (or of nothingness itself) which will be blown up in the Final Scene". In parallel to this, the lunar landscape and the choreography of the first explosive scene are reflected in the matter in ferment and in the grooves of the works by Juana Francés and Antoni Tàpies, and in the tensions of the burlap of Manolo Millares. Finally, the explosion suggested by Miró, in his1938 drawing, is a dance, with its stars, birds and trees, in a joyful choreography on a lightgrey-earth coloured background. Like the two deflagrations of the film, which confront us with fragments which dance, releasing energy.