Art Madrid'23 – Marcel Broodthaers retrospective at MNCARS Madrid

 

Art Madrid, for those dates will be overturned with news of the upcoming February issue and did not want to miss the opportunity to remember this artist, filmmaker and poet influenced by Surrealism.

 

 


The Belgian Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) was one of the best examples of Conceptual Art, Art of the idea and of evocation, pure visual poetry from Beuys and Duchamp and practiced, among others, and with great success by Yoko Ono.

 

 


He started his career as a poet, photographer and journalist but his critical and curious spirit soon called him on the way of creation. It was the beginning of the 1960s and artistic when institutions were facing the critical attitude of the creators who wanted to end "the ideology of art" and "the art become ideology". In this context Marcel Broodthaers start searching the limits of aesthetics in many ways, from its earliest objects with mussels and eggs until his "Fictitious Museum", the "Musée d'Art Moderne.Département des Aigles".

 

 

 

Broodthaers made his first film in 1957, and during the next 10 years produced more than 50 short films, documentaries, auteur pieces, experimental video, that presented him as a visual artist. Already in the 70s of the twentieth century he oriented his production to the object and collage was oriented, working almost compulsively with found materials, waste (egg shells and mussels, furniture, clothing, garden tools) and recontextualising them using the language as a tool.

 

As principal theme of his work, he always questioned the idea of ??artistic representation and the product of art, and subverts the concepts of signifier and signified as we know them, proposing new codes and new interpretations, as Magritte did before.

 

 

 

 


Now, MOMA / Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Reina Sofia Museum prepare for October 2016 one of the most complete retrospective dedicated to one of the most important artists on the international scene and a profound influence on contemporary artists. The exhibition is a journey through the many facets of the artist through 300 representative works of his work, accompanied by an extensive catalog.

 

 

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.