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William Kentridge, Basta y Sobra . Foto ©Joaquín Cortés / Román Lores

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE . Basta y sobra

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía ( November 1, 2017 - March 19, 2018 )

The exhibition organized by the Reina Sofía Museum states that the scenic work of Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955), winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2017, can not be understood as a parallel speech to the plastic. On the contrary, it is a same essence that finds different manifestations that are continuously fed back. The own evolution of the intellectual and professional trajectory of Kentridge, uncommon artist in the museums of Spain, perfectly testifies the symbiosis of both "worlds".

Kentridge moved in his youth to Paris for a year to study theater and mime. On his return to South Africa, in 1982, he continued his work in theater and in film industry, but it was the plastic arts that at the beginning of the 90s positioned him internationally, gaining great recognition after his participation in the first Johannesburg Biennial (1995).

Since that time, he has combined the practice of drawing with cinema and theater, becoming a multidisciplinary artist who has also cultivated scenography, collage, engraving, sculpture and video art. From 2003, Kentridge began to be interested in sculpture and video installation and to include references to theater, opera and film in his new works.

©Juan Muñoz. Double Bind, 2001. Instalación en PLANTA, 2017

JUAN MUÑOZ - Double Bind

PLANTA Fundación Sorigué. La Plana del Corb, Lérida (October 20, 2017 - October 20, 2022)

If someone wonders why Double Bind, the monumental piece that Juan Muñoz made for the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, is considered one of the fundamental works of contemporary sculpture, now has the opportunity to discover and experience it in PLANTA, the a new project that the group and the Sorigué Foundation have launched in their facilities, near Lérida.

Double Bind was created in the year 2000 to appear as part of the "Unilever Series", a specific commission that the Tate entrusted to Juan Muñoz and that was curated by James Lingwood and Susan May. The realization of this project - the second of the series, behind I Do, I Undo and I Redo, by Louise Bourgeois - was the definitive international recognition to place Muñoz among the most respected artists of the twentieth century. The unexpected death of the sculptor, a few months after the inauguration, truncated his promising career, being Double Bind its last great work.

August Rodin - Andromeda.© agence photographique du musee Rodin - Pauline Hisbacq

AUGUSTE RODIN - Hell according to Rodin

Fundación MAPFRE Casa Garriga Nogués . Barcelona (11 October 2017 - 21 January 2018)

This exhibition brings together a hundred sculptures and around thirty drawings, that have only been shown on rare occasions, plus various mock-ups and models that give an insight into the creative process of the sculptor and the evolution that the Gates were subjected to over the years. Considered the central work of the French sculptor’s career, who spent more than twenty years working on it, this monumental piece offers a spectacular view of hell, frenzied and tempestuous, yet also sensual and evocative.

The exhibition Hell according to Rodin, organized to coincide with the centenary of the death of the artist, looks back over the history of this iconic work that the artist never considered to be finished, and which was exhibited only once. The sculptures, models and drawings provide an insight into Rodin's creative process, as well as his career as a whole, in that the Gates reflect a condensed version of his stylistic explorations out of which came some of his best known works such as The Thinker, The Kiss and Ugolino, considered to be genuine landmarks in the History of Art.

Anthony Caro - Purling 1969 - ©Barford Sculptures, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art

FRIEZE LONDON & FRIEZE MASTERS 2017

Regent’s Park ( London ) ( 5 – 8 October 2017 )

Frieze London features more than 160 of the world’s leading galleries. View and buy art from over 1,000 of today’s leading artists, and experience the fair’s critically acclaimed Frieze Projects and Talks programmes

Frieze Masters features more than 130 leading modern and historical galleries from around the world, showcasing art from the ancient era and Old Masters to the late 20th century.

© Lluis Lleó

LLUÍS LLEÓ - All Mighty Pencil

Centre d´ art Tecla Sala ( September 28, 2017 – January 7, 2018 )

The exhibition presents a set of seven large format papers, made this past year that, along with others of medium format, complement one of the most delicate series of the artist. Each of the great papers of Nepal are built by eighteen others who are sewn together, are an allusion to the value of small things, the constancy and the requirement, the seed of all the great works of the human being.

Lluís Lleó has used during his career a permanent dialogue with the role as territory of reflection and experimentation with painting. Paper, like the skin itself, is the subject and witness of the passing of time and of each and every human experience. From the life of the artist, from this go and return between the frantic activity of the city of New York where he lives and the mental reference of the memory of his Empordà landscape, he claims the experience of painting as a tool in which the times , the manual processes and the final result form a personal and poetic attitude.

Joan Brossa "Tinter abocat", 1969. Foto: Toni Coll

JOAN BROSSA - Poesía Brossa

MACBA Museu d´Art Contemporani de Barcelona ( September 21, 2017 - February 25, 2018 )

MACBA presents a comprehensive survey of the work of this pioneering artist, through his books, his visual investigations, and including his work in the theatre, cinema, music and artistic actions.

Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 1919-1998) was first and foremost a poet, but we believe it is necessary to see this in relation to his way of working, his poiesis. This exhibition establishes a dialogue and confronts Brossa’s work with the artists Marcel Marien, Nicanor Parra and Ian Hamilton-Finlay. Brossa was a poet, but his works stood at a crossroad of languages. Frequently collaborating with other artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, comedians and even magicians, his work constantly went against the grain and beyond the limits between disciplines.

© Istanbul Biennial

BIENAL DE ESTAMBUL - A good neighbour

15th Istanbul Biennial ( September 16 - November 12, 2017 )

The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts has been organising the Istanbul Biennial since 1987. The biennial aims to create a meeting point in İstanbul in the field of visual arts between artists from diverse cultures and the audience. The fourteen biennials IKSV has organised up to now have enabled the formation of an international cultural network between local and international art circles, artists, curators and art critics by bringing together new trends in contemporary art every two years.

Considered as one of the most prestigious biennials alongside Venice, Sao Paulo and Sydney, the Istanbul Biennial prefers an exhibition model which enables a dialogue between artists and the audience through the work of the artists instead of a national representation model. The curator, appointed by an international advisory board, develops a conceptual framework according to which a variety of artists and projects are invited to the exhibition.

Andy Warhol "Marilyn" 1967. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

WARHOL - El arte mecánico

Caixa Forum Barcelona ( September 14 - December 31, 2017 )

The show underscores the way in which Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, 1928 - New York, 1987) captures the cult of commodity that emerged from industrial inventions of the nineteenth century. Always attentive to the technical and industrial advance, Warhol used all kinds of techniques and machines, from screen printing to video recorder, with productive patterns that he defined as "own an assembly line."

This seemingly impersonal mechanical art, cynically denies any intentional spiritual charge. Warhol's nihilistic silence is, in fact, one of the factors that give poetic height to his work. Along with a selection of essays written by theorists of his work, the exhibition includes a section of portraits of the artist, taken by photographers such as Alberto Schommer, Richard Avedon or Robert Mapplethorpe.

Louise Bourgeois, "Spider Couple", 2003, Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation

LOUISE BOURGEOIS - Twosome

Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( September 8, 2017 – January 21, 2018 )

For the first time in Israel, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to groundbreaking French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), one of the most brilliant, prominent, and influential women in 20th-century art. The exhibition explores the duality in Bourgeois’s concepts and forms; the dialogues between inside and outside, conscious and unconscious, male and female, the body and architecture, passive and active.

XXXI-34 © Erwin Bechtold

ERWIN BECHTOLD

Sala d'Exposicions El Roser . Ciutadella . Menorca. ( August 11 - September 30, 2017 )

The work of Erwin Bechtold presents a very significant spiritual concept: duality, confrontation of opposing elements. Bechtold, does not seek the harmony between contrasts, on the contrary, he knows how to visualize the struggle between the elements; This inquietude, is the one that provokes the tension in his works.

In this exhibition of 2017 in El Roser, Erwin Bechtold, who continues to work tirelessly, presents us with his most recent work, in which we find a remarkable variation in his vocabulary, now the confrontations are articulated between geometry and signs made quickly and uncontrolled causing tensions between reason and expressiveness.

Once again, we are faced with an unmistakable theme, characteristic of the artist, which has been developing remarkably throughout his career.
Erwin Bechtold, presents a risky, very rational painting; but at the same time very emotional. Two bases, reason and emotion, which represent the guiding thread that symbolizes all his work.

With words of the artist "Man occupies the center of my work, like nature, lives in contrasts, tensions, disturbances. Existentially, we are subject to the game of controlled disorder, and to uncontrolled order. My paintings are an attempt to transfer that complex enigma to the artistic reality"

Sin título 1998 © Chema Madoz

CHEMA MADOZ . Ars Combinatoria

Kutxa Kultur Arteguneak . ( July 21 - November 5, 2017 )

His special way of interpreting art through photography and his poetic vision have made Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958) one of the most interesting creators of the contemporary art scene. His work shows the hidden relationships between objects and inquires into the pitfalls of sight, opening a window to our better understanding of the world.
 
Chema Madoz wants to accentuate the event and emphasize the irony that underlies objects. He works with objects and confronts them in various ways: the object found, unaltered, the object manipulated, and the object invented and constructed by himself in his study. The artist considers himself an object sculptor who operates from the point of view of a photographer and points out that photography is the memory register that allows him to fix his ideas. In the various procedures that he uses: condensations, associations, juxtapositions, displacements, ars combinatoria, fortuitous encounters to which he subjects objects, Madoz becomes related to the surrealists in that search for new meanings, new kinships, the imagination. There are also in these movements, metamorphosis, combinations or search for relationships between objects, a kind of lightness that is associated with the idea of ​​play.
 
Some of the formal displacements of this creator are minimal, but of extraordinary effectiveness. The daily life is inspired by the most curious associations and in them there is always a background of play. Gestures and constructions where he makes the rarest seem normal, like when he puts a sandal on a boot. Try to show subtle changes of things, additions or subtractions, displacements or metamorphosis, which generate a singular strangeness.
 
The exhibition presents an extensive tour of Chema Madoz work. It approaches the career of the artist as a whole, offering a wide overview of the various stages by what has happened his work so far, as well as his evolution and the change of objects that have caught his attention.

Anthony Caro, Erl King (2009). ©Barford Sculptures, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art. Photo: Stephen White.

FRIEZE SCULPTURE 2017

London's Regent's Park ( July 5 - October 8, 2017 )

Selected by Clare Lilley (Director of Programme, Yorkshire Sculpture Park) and featuring leading international galleries, Frieze’s first-ever summer display in the English Gardens of The Regent’s Park brings together 25 new and significant works by leading 20th-century and contemporary artists from around the world: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Rasheed Araeen, Reza Aramesh, Miquel Barceló, Anthony Caro, John Chamberlain, Tony Cragg, Michael Craig-Martin, Urs Fischer, Gary Hume, KAWS, Takuro Kuwata, Alicja Kwade, Mimmo Paladino, Eduardo Paolozzi, Jaume Plensa, Thomas J Price, Peter Regli, Ugo Rondinone, Sarah Sze, Hank Willis Thomas, Bernar Venet, John Wallbank and Emily Young.

Walking on the Edge (2012) © Bill Viola

BILL VIOLA : Retrospectiva

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao ( June 30 - November 9, 2017 )

Already in his early single-channel videotapes, Bill Viola’s works were addressing such large questions as the notion of time, the meaning of our existence, and our place in the world.

With the arrival of the new millennium and the advent of high-definition technologies, Viola was able to create monumental installations such as Going Forth By Day, in which five large wall projections sharing the same space invite viewers to enter the light and to reflect on their own lives and that of our human existence.

In the last decade, Bill Viola has continued his meditations on the transitions in life, the cycle of birth-death-rebirth, and the space in between, as seen in his seven-channel installation The Dreamers (2013).

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Bill Viola: A Retrospective, a thematic and chronological survey of the career of Viola, one of the leading artists of our time and a pioneer in the development of video art. Organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and sponsored by Iberdrola, this ambitious exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Viola’s oeuvre and the evolution of media art as an art form.

Joan Miró . Miró Mai vist . Image © Isaac Buj

JOAN MIRÓ - Miró mai vist

Fundación Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca ( 24 de Junio de 2017 - 28 de Enero de 2018 )

Fundación Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca ( June 24, 2017 - January 9, 2018 )
Miró mai vist, commemorates the 25th anniversary of the opening to the public of the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca and focuses on the last period of creation of the artist on the island, since it settled in 1956 until his death in 1983.

The exhibition brings together a unique selection of works never exhibited in the Fundació, some unpublished, as well as graphic and documentary material, which are now shown under an unusual perspective. Some of these pieces were included in the exhibition of the Grand Palais of Paris in 1974, event that would mark a moment of revision and rethinking for Miró, giving place to one of its more fruitful periods, that would condition the rest of his creative trajectory.
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The 95 works that were exhibited came from the Sert and Son Boter workshops located in Mallorca, between the 60s and 70s, and then passed by friends, institutions and private collectors. Miró mai vist, is able to bring together these unique pieces in the place where they were conceived, on a way back that celebrates the artist's gift to the city of Palma.

© David Hockney Collection Tate, London

DAVID HOCKNEY

Centre Pompidou, Paris ( June 21 - October 23, 2017 )

In collaboration with London’s Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Centre Pompidou presents the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to the work of David Hockney. The exhibition celebrates the artist’s 80th birthday, retracing his entire career through more than 160 works (paintings, photographs, engravings, video installations, drawings and printed works), including his most iconic paintings (swimming pools, double portraits and monumental landscapes) and some of his most recent creations.

Anthony Caro - Andy 1966 ©Barford Sculptures, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art

ART BASEL 2017

Art Basel (Basel) ( June 15 – 18, 2017 )

The anchor of Art Basel’s show is its Galleries sector. Visitors will discover a breadth of Modern and contemporary works including paintings, drawings, sculpture, installations, prints, photography, video and digital art by more than 4,000 artists.

© Paolo de Luca

TADASHI KAWAMATA - The Shower

Fondazione Made in Cloister ( May 14 - August 5, 2017 )

The monumental facilities of Tadashi Kawamata are not conceived to be immovable and can be described as the footprint of the nomad that creates archaic habitable structures with natural elements recovered between residues. In the case of this exhibition, the material is from wooden boxes of fruits and vegetables used in markets.

Kawamata was the focus of international criticism with its ephemeral environmental facilities, many of them enormous and always environmentally friendly. In the installation, created especially for the space of the Santa Caterina cloister in Formiello, entitled The Shower, the artist wanted to recreate the sensation he had when he first entered the Cloister and was struck by a cascade of light that seemed to come from The dome of the church.

Present in many countries of the world, Kawamata's installations are part of a new way of understanding social art, an art that was not born to be commodified, which allows it to be seen by all and also from within. In the realization of its facilities Kawamata also deals with local people, whose active participation gives a contribution that goes beyond mere execution. In the process of their work, in fact, it reflects the craftsmanship of those who contribute to its construction.
  

Bust of Diego 1955 - © The Estate of Alberto Giacometti

GIACOMETTI

Tate Modern ( May 10 – September 10, 2017 )

Tate Modern presents the UK’s first major retrospective of Alberto Giacometti.
Celebrated as a sculptor, painter and draughtsman, Giacometti’s distinctive elongated figures are some of the most instantly recognisable works of modern art. This exhibition reasserts Giacometti’s place alongside the likes of Matisse, Picasso and Degas as one of the great painter-sculptors of the twentieth century. Through unparalleled access to the extraordinary collection and archive of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris, Tate Modern’s ambitious and wide-ranging exhibition brings together over 250 works. It includes rarely seen plasters and drawings which have never been exhibited before and showcases the full evolution of Giacometti’s career across five decades, from early works such as Head of a Woman (Flora Mayo) 1926 to iconic bronze sculptures such as Walking Man I (1960).
The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern and Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris

Julio González | Els enamorats II | ca. 1932-1933

JULIO GONZÁLEZ´S CONSTELLATIONS - Beween representationt and abstraction

IVAM, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern ( 23 de Marzo 2017 - 17 Marzo 2019 )

The shift that took place in sculpture in the twentieth century was a response to the new narrative values that appeared in the visual arts and that incorporated advances in science and culture in their proposals.

These contributions to the language of three-dimensional work in Cubist, Futurist and Constructivist circles broke the contract with classical representation and lifelikeness and activated the appearance of ideas and contexts of an abrasive nature.

In this new presentation of the room devoted to the Julio González collection, viewed from our current perspective and sensibility, the intention is to emphasise the basic concepts of the experience of sculpture, such as the aesthetic handling of materials and their arrangement in space.

Various thematic areas will be created in order to achieve this aim, providing symbolic frameworks that offer a connection with other spheres of reflection, expression and thought: transformation of the way of seeing and perceiving, rationality and intuition, architecture and space, processes and awareness of the form and structure of the object and fiction.

Antoni Tàpies. Pantalons sobre bastidor, 1971. Col·lecció Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona.

ANTONI TÀPIES - Objectes

Fundació Antoni Tàpies ( February 5, 2017 - January 14, 2018 )

The object production of Antoni Tàpies constitutes an important part of his work of maturity. As with material paintings, Tàpies intended to link with objects his work to which it is real, concrete and material. That's why objects that attracted his attention were part of his environment, such as stacks of dishes or newspapers, brooms, chairs or folded napkins. Tàpies incorporated them to the surface of the painting, made assemblages or represented them on a two-dimensional surface.