Art Madrid'23 – Exhibition\"Myths of pop\" in Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

The last time we enjoyed POP in Madrid was in 1992 with the great Pop Art exhibition at the Reina Sofia Museum. Now, over 20 years later, the curator Paloma Alarcó, Head of Conservation of Modern Painting from the Thyssen, proposes a rereading of the movement that erased the barrier between high and low culture, Pop, from the experience and the evolution of art we have aquired with the XXI century.
Myths of Pop, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, shows more than 100 works, the most representative and repetaed images of those pop myths, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Robert Indiana and the Spanish pop representación of Equipo Crónica and Eduardo Arroyo.
 
Paloma Alarcó' s selection includes pioneers of British pop, classic American pop and its expansion in Europe tracking the common sources of international pop to review and revisit the myths that have traditionally defined the movement. The goal, according to organziadores is "to show that the mythical images of these artists hide an ironic novel code and perception of reality, a code that is still alive in the art of our time." The exhibition is not ordered temporarily, but rather focus: begins with the collage, advertising and comic, with great works of Hamilton, and continues with rooms devoted to major pop icons that we all know as the Beatles, Warhol's Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, until the still lifes, urban erotica, history painting and art about art.
The exhibition features works from over fifty museums and private collections around the world, with outstanding loans from the National Gallery in Washington, the Tate in London, the IVAM in Valencia or the Mughrabi collection of New York. A comprehensive example of the big names who invented an art from their everyday objects, consumer products, television, cinema, advertising and comic with an aesthetic and an attitude that got to reconnect the average citizen with the Great Art. Pop, beyond slogans and color, proposed a reading of world history and politics full of irony and humor.

As the Curator notes in the text that presents the exhibition "pop hides a fascinating paradox. On the one hand it was an innovative movement that paved the way for postmodernism, yet expressed a clear orientation towards the past. Pop´s ambition focused on connect with tradition using new media derived from television, advertising and comics was concentrated mainly in the reassessment of styles and artistic genres and reinterpreting the works of the old masters, making tributes or irreverent parodies with them". 

Myths of Pop includes a program with pop cinema, concerts, conferences and even the development of a comic book published for the occasion. The new exhibition at the Thyssen can be enjoyed until 14 September.

 

 

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.