¿Qué es el sitio web?

https://www.facebook.com/222685547587249/

Barcelona Staycation, Barcelona (2026)

23/03/2026

On Friday I went to see “Real Gold: The Veins of Planet Earth” by Colombian artist Juliana Plexxo at the Bluewave Alliance space in Port Olímpic. The show reframes “real gold” not as commodity, but as what sustains life—here focused on protecting the sea.

Plexxo, whose name references the solar plexus (the third chakra in Hindu tradition) brings together ecological and spiritual reflection through female archetypes and a sense of nature as sacred rather than extractable. Activism is built into her practice: alongside this collaboration, she has worked with Indigenous-rights groups like Amazon Watch, drawing on a Maya legend in which maize, not gold, is the true treasure, critiquing dominant ideas of progress.

Born in Bogotá in 1994, Plexxo spent her adolescent years in Ecuador, following the assassination of her father, a crime journalist, by narco-traffickers. She describes those years as decisive in deepening her connection to nature and ancestral cultures. She also cites her admiration for Oswaldo Guayasamín, the Ecuadorian painter and sculptor whose socially critical, expressionist work gives form to the pain and resilience of Indigenous communities. In 2021 she paid tribute to him with an eight-meter mural at the Fundación Guayasamín in Quito.

Her signature medium is copper engraving, developed during a residency at Barcelona’s Studio 46, a historic workshop, legacy of master engraver Joan Barbarà, and associated with artists such as Miró, Dalí, and Chagall, where she keeps a studio. But she adds a radical twist: she pulls a single impression and then destroys the plate, turning each work into an unrepeatable statement about death, transformation, and rebirth.

I was struck by how some works echo Gaudí’s trencadís: engraved shards with recurring eyes and profiles, layered with oil and acrylic. One of them (slide 2, bottom) was used in a performance in Paris: in “Believe to Create” Plexxo defaced it with oil and acid as a metaphor for what humans do to nature, then reworked it into a call for awareness and creation—the result recalling Po***ck-like dripping.

You can still see the pop-up show until Sunday the 29th, daily between 2pm and 6pm

https://julianaplexxo.com/

17/03/2026

What stood out most to me in MACBA’s "Like a Dance of Starlings" was Claudia Andujar’s "Sonhos Yanomami" (2002) in the section Vibrating in Nature. This node shifts subjectivity away from the individual and toward a network of relations in which the biological, symbolic, and spiritual converge.

Born in Switzerland (1931) and based in Brazil since 1955, Andujar began as a photojournalist, but from the early 70s onward she devoted her life and work to the Yanomami, one of the largest Indigenous groups in Brazil. I first encountered her work in the fantastic 2021 retrospective at KBr.

Composed from images and negatives from her first trip to the Catrimani River basin in 1971, the series evokes a shamanic worldview in which dreams are a deep link to the spirit world, and humans are inseparable from the “breath of the forest”: spirits and ancestors inhabit mountains, animals, and human bodies alike; everyone breathes the same air, and the air itself is sacred.

That understanding also shapes the visual language. Andujar builds images like a palimpsest: faces, forest, and architecture layered until the boundary between human and nonhuman disappears.

1. Portrait as landscape: the face isn’t set against nature—nature and memory sit on the skin, everything shares one surface.

2. Forest as dwelling: body, shelter, and canopy overlap until “place” becomes relational.

3. Water as threshold: reflections and depths open a passage between what’s seen and what’s sensed.

4. More-than-human gaze: the owl’s eyes hold your gaze while forest textures wash across it—as if the forest itself were watching back.

Andujar once said: “I’m connected to the Indigenous people, to the land, to an essential struggle… I may not understand everything, and I don’t try to. It isn’t necessary—love is enough.”

For me, that’s the ethic of these images: not distance and extraction, but solidarity and bearing witness, photography as a form of accompaniment, standing with a people—and with the forest—in a struggle that remains urgent.

https://www.macba.cat/es/obra/sonhos-yanomami/
https://www.macba.cat/en/exhibitions/like-a-dance-of-starlings-macba-collection-thirty-years-and-infinite-ways-of-being/

17/03/2026

Yesterday I went to "Like a Dance of Starlings: Thirty Years and Infinite Ways of Being", marking MACBA's 30th anniversary. The title evokes thousands of birds moving in sync across a winter sky, a metaphor for how works regroup with each new presentation to form new maps of meaning. Compared to the prior chronological order, this show feels more organic as it is organized by themes, and because there are fewer works, gives each one more room to breathe.

Three thematic nodes felt especially connected, dealing with how we inhabit identity, how we organize reality, and how we move beyond the marked path.

Inhabiting Borders (slide 1)

- Luis Claramunt, Figura (1978)
- Josep Uclés, The Artist and the Model (1987)
- Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self-Portrait (1986)

This node explores Anzaldúa’s borderland subjectivities: identity as plural and porous, assembled from fragments, lived at the edges of the norm.

Other Ways of Organizing the World (slide 2)

- August Puig, Composition (top right)

This node asks how we establish hierarchies between visible/invisible, conscious/unconscious, and how images become systems for thinking, not just reflecting reality but shaping it.

Leaving the Furrow (slide 2)

- Josefa Toldrà, The Angel and the Pauper (1956)
- Joan Ponç, Hallucination Suite 2 & 3 (1947)

This node moves into delirium: leaving the marked path to explore visionary and magical realities, testing the boundaries of mental order.

A thread runs through all three: the sense that “ways of being” are never fixed. They are continually made and remade—at the porous borders of identity, through the shifting images that shape reality, and in the mind’s own visionary explorations.

In a future post I’ll write about Claudia Andujar and the “Vibrating in Nature” node, which deserves a post of its own.

MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

15/03/2026

Last Friday I went to MAKO, the exhibition at Palau Robert produced by Casa Àsia in tribute to Japanese textile designer and ceramicist Mako Artigas. (Don’t miss the documentary, where she and family members are interviewed by curator Ricard Bru.)

Masako Ishikawa (Mako) grew up in Tokyo, with deep family roots in the textile industry. She arrived in Barcelona in 1960 and studied at La Massana, where she met Josep Llorens i Artigas—whose interest in Japan and friendship with Hamada Shoji helped shift ceramics in Catalonia from utilitarian craft to modern art—as well as his son, Joan Gardy Artigas, whom she married.

The couple moved to Paris, where Mako developed a prolific textile practice; her clients included Paco Rabanne, Nina Ricci, and Kenzo. Her designs range from geometric abstraction to floral and natural motifs, treating pattern as an inventive language rather than mere decoration.

The exhibition frames her work as aesthetic hybridity, where Japanese traditions, especially Mingei (Japanese folk art, championed by Serizawa Keisuke) and katagami (cut-out paper stencils used to print textiles) meet Western modernity.

Her sensibility was shaped by a life immersed in art and artists: through her husband she met Joan Miró as well as a broader constellation of 20th-century figures (Calder, Braque, Palazuelo, Giacometti...), and she frequently cites Matisse as a key source of inspiration.

Since 1989, she has lived in Gallifa, 40 km. from Barcelona, where she and her husband established the Artigas Foundation, and where alongside drawing and textiles, she developed a ceramic practice (first stoneware, later porcelain) from plates and bowls to artistic vases, often with vegetal and natural motifs.

Her biography also places her within a broader movement: she belongs to the same generation as Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, and Shigeko Kubota, artists who, in different ways, brought Japanese modernity into Western contexts and reshaped the visual language of the late 20th century.

06/03/2026

Tuesday, at his talk at the J.V. Foix Library, Pierre Lemaitre invoked Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi (1896) when talking about Donald Trump. It’s hard to imagine a better template for the grotesque side of authority than Père Ubu: childish, tyrannical, corrupt; part clown, part butcher, driven by greed—and cowardice. Often described as a parody of Macbeth, the play follows Ubu as he murders the king, seizes the throne, and rules through purges, plunder, and intimidation.

That too is the thread running through the current Picasso Museum exhibition 'Ubu painter. Alfred Jarry and the arts,' with nearly 500 works and documents tracing Ubu’s legacy in modern art, from Jarry’s own drawings to Surrealism (Max Ernst), Dubuffet’s art brut, and Enrico Baj’s 'nuclear' painting, among others.

Four works especially stuck with me:
• Georges Rouault’s illustrations for 'Réincarnations du Père Ubu' (1932): a biting critique of colonial violence
• Picasso, 'The Dream and Lie of Franco' (1937): furious anti-war satire, Franco as a mad, mythical monster
• Hélène Delprat, 'Ubu–Trump / UB-USA' (2024-5): a painting monkey—absurdity, narcissism, and contempt for truth condensed into caricature
• William Kentridge, 'Ubu and the Truth Commission' (1997): puppets, animation, and live performance braided with TRC testimony to confront state violence, trauma, and guilt in post-apartheid South Africa

The exhibition ends by grounding Ubu locally in Catalonia, where the ubuesque became a language for political theater. Pilar Aymerich translated the play into Catalan and directed it in 1964 in a closed-door staging (Spain was still under Franco). Later, Albert Boadella’s 'Ubú president' (1995) recast Ubu as a ruthless caricature of then president Jordi Pujol.

What I took away is that Ubu endures because he is never just a buffoon. The crude language, bad taste, casual violence—these aren’t just provocation: they show how power can make shamelessness feel like honesty, and spectacle feel like strength. More than a century later, artists keep returning to Ubu because here caricature isn’t mere entertainment—it’s diagnosis.

https://museupicassobcn.cat/en/whats-on/exhibition/ubu-painter-alfred-jarry-and-arts

Museu Picasso Barcelona

27/02/2026

The Americana Film Fest is bringing a wealth of independent North American Films to Barcelona, March 10-15.

https://americanafilmfest.com/en/

These are the films that have caught my attention:

Blue Heron, directed by Sophy Romvari: Because of the rave reviews, because of the cinematography by Maya Bankovic which makes me think it is a film to be seen at the cinema, and because it has been compared to Aftersun, which I really liked.

Omaha, directed by Cole Webley: Because it is a road movie with stunning cinematography which makes it the kind of movie to see at the cinema, and the plot about a family evicted from their home, reminded me a bit of Nomadland, which I loved.

Rebuilding, directed by Max Walker-Silverman: Because it's about community and resilience: a group of people living in a trailer park after losing their homes to wildfires, trying to rebuild their lives, some of them played by non-professional actors all of which once again made me think of Nomadland.

Late Fame, directed by Kent Jones: Because it's based on Arthur Schnitzler's satire about what happens when a poet is “discovered” late in life, and suddenly pulled into the orbit of admirers who treat him as a celebrity and genius.

Lurker, directed by Alex Russell: Because it's a psychological thriller and darkly comedic satire that delves into themes of celebrity worship and fame in the age of social media, which makes it a great film to see in conjunction with "Late Fame".

If you see/have seen any of these films, please share your observations in the comments.

27/02/2026

H2O is one of those galleries you can walk past dozens of times without realizing it’s there. From the street it looks like just another discreetly charming modernist townhouse, and despite the plaque by the door, you get the feeling you are stepping into someone’s private space. One of the pleasures of going to an opening, in fact, is that they also open access to the garden at the back, which makes lingering there part of the overall experience.

Yesterday’s opening was "Symmetries", the second solo exhibition by Koke Pursals (b. 1961), following "Una Mirada Humana" (2024), a benefit exhibition supporting children with cancer and their families. Better known professionally for his work in business and philanthropy, Pursals has long cultivated photography as a parallel passion. Since 2022, he has also served as Vice President of Fundació Foto Colectania, one of Barcelona’s key venues for photography.

On his many travels, Pursals has used photography as a way of looking at the world—its complexity, street life, and cultural diversity—without judgment, catching fleeting glimpses of how people and objects occupy space. In "Symmetries", that gaze centers on two intertwined fascinations: the geometries of space and museums / exhibition spaces. Staircases, corridors, mirrored halls, visitors, vitrines, checkerboard floors, reflections, and sculptures in dialogue with exterior architecture all become part of the same visual inquiry.

What I found most interesting is the way Pursals juxtaposes artworks, spectators, and the interior and exterior spaces they inhabit, giving equal weight to each. The result is less about documenting trips and exhibitions than about revealing patterns, echoes, and moments of visual balance—as if photography could briefly capture a hidden order within the chaos.

https://www.kokepursals.com/
https://www.h2o.es/ #/es/exposicion/433/simetries

12/02/2026

I’ve been to many Miró exhibitions, but what surprised me about "Miró and the United States" was how many women artists were included. Here are some works that really stood out.

Slide 1
Three similar-looking works by three different artists—only one is widely known:
Sarah Grilo — Unfair (1963)
Robert Rauschenberg — Untitled (1975)
Peter Miller — Ceremonial Objects (1940)
Two men and a woman? Think again: “Peter Miller” was Henrietta Myers. She adopted a man's name due to sexism in the art world. (And she spent part of each year among the Pueblo people of New Mexico.)

Slide 2
Lee Krasner — Abstract No. 2 (1947)
Anne Ryan — Oracle (1947)
I knew Krasner (via her marriage to Po***ck) but Anne Ryan was new to me. A writer first, she began painting in the 1930s, and in this woodcut built varied textures by applying hand pressure to paper laid on an inked block.

Slide 3
Two are by Lee Krasner, one by Alfonso Ossorio. Which is the odd one out?
If you guessed the top one, you’re wrong: Krasner painted it (about 2×5m) while mourning Po***ck’s death and working in his barn studio on Long Island.
Lee Krasner — The Seasons (1957)
Alfonso Ossorio — Number 14–1953 (1953)
Lee Krasner — Untitled (1947–48)

Slide 4
Elaine + Willem de Kooning: which top painting is whose?
Willem de Kooning — Asheville (1948)
Elaine de Kooning — Untitled (1950)
Sonja Sekula — African Moonsun (1945)
A significant intellectual voice in the New York art scene, Elaine's role in Abstract Expressionism is finally being reassessed. At Black Mountain College in the summer of 1948, she really flourished—unlike Willem, who found the rural setting isolating.

Slide 5
Arshile Gorky — Garden in Sochi (1943)
Dorothea Tanning — Tout est illusion, peut-être (1975)
William Baziotes — Night Mirror (1947)
Until recently Tanning was known mainly as Max Ernst’s fourth wife (moving to Arizona with him in 1946 and staying with him until his death). This late painting from her period in France is a far cry from her earlier illusionistic Gothic-inflected Surrealism.

https://www.fmirobcn.org/.../5831/miro-and-the-united-states

14/08/2025

Barcelona has changed enormously in the 40+ years since I moved here. When I first arrived as a student, it felt provincial, with almost no ethnic diversity. Most “immigrants” were Spaniards from Andalusia or Extremadura, disparagingly called “charnegos”. Today, about 26.3% of residents are foreign nationals, adding pressure to the housing market and to an already dense city. With over 15,800 inhabitants per square kilometer, Barcelona is now one of the most crowded cities in Europe.

Back then, many Americans couldn’t even place Barcelona on a map. The 1992 Olympics changed that, putting the city firmly on the global stage, while Spain’s entry into the EU brought investment and newcomers from around the world. Today, Barcelona ranks among the world’s top urban destinations. While just 1.6 million people live here, nearly 32 million visit each year, about half of them day-trippers, including cruise passengers, who tend to cluster in the same few spots: Las Ramblas, the Sagrada Família, and Park Güell. For those living in these areas, that concentration of visitors is a daily challenge.

So for this Throwback Thursday, I’m focusing on the Sagrada Família with three snapshots in time:
🐐 1915 – goats strolling past the basilica in its early stages of construction.
👶 1966 – my first visit, age two, when tourism was minimal, and Spain was still under Franco’s dictatorship.
🎒 2025 – the “herds” are no longer goats but tourists.

The last time I entered the basilica was in 2020, during the pandemic (slide 2). With the city empty of visitors, many attractions offered special prices — even free entry — to locals. I spent hours inside, watching the light shift through the stained glass, washing the walls in changing colors. It was magical, not just for the beauty, but for the peace. No matter how stunning a place is, when it’s packed to the brim, the magic fades. That day, I experienced Gaudí’s masterpiece in the rare silence it deserves.

08/08/2025

Every so often, Casa Seat hosts an exhibition, and as soon as I saw this one, I knew I had to return with my grandchildren. "Creating Film Characters: Grangel Studio’s 40th Anniversary Exhibition" is a tribute to the creative universe of the Barcelona-based team behind some of the most iconic characters in contemporary animation.

Founded by brothers Carlos and Jordi Grangel, the studio has contributed to over 30 international productions, collaborating with filmmakers like Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro, as well as studios such as DreamWorks, Sony Pictures, and Netflix.

The exhibition features more than 300 original pieces, including sketches and concept art from Pinocchio, Co**se Bride, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon, The Prince of Egypt, Antz, and Hotel Transylvania, offering a glimpse into the creative process behind films that spark wonder in children and invite adults to rediscover those feelings alongside them.

https://www.casa.seat/en/Exhibition-Creating-film-characters

07/08/2025

Artevistas Gallery has two locations, one tucked into a narrow alleyway in the Gothic Quarter, and another just across from the MEAM in El Born. It’s at the latter that you’ll currently find an exhibition of work by Xavi Mira.

Born in Barcelona in 1974, Mira’s contribution to art lies in the way he merges street art with traditional painting, creating works that are both visually striking and emotionally charged. He plays with luminous contrasts and experiments with textures and paint application techniques to bring depth and movement to his canvases.

Mira’s work is expressive and vigorous, often centered on the human figure in urban environments. He explores themes such as loneliness, love, loss, hope, alienation, and connection — the emotional landscape of present-day city life. His paintings capture fleeting moments of everyday life, and as the title of the show, "Interval", suggests, these pieces occupy a kind of suspended space between what we perceive and what we sense. Somewhere between blurred memories, passing sensations, and dreamlike visions, Mira invites us to pause and notice the in-between moments, the ones we often overlook, but where something essential might quietly emerge.

As Mira himself says: “I see art every time I look, every time I think. Any routine, everyday, or unexpected moment is an opportunity to create... Painting is a cleansing and a constant healing of the self. In each work, a part of me disappears to make room for new emotions… The more I paint, the more I live.”

https://www.artevistas.eu/events/xavi-mira-intervalo/

05/08/2025

As I left the Maya Deren exhibition at the Ethnological and World Cultures Museum, a display of traditional blue Senegalese textiles caught my eye. Made using resist-dyeing techniques like batik and tie-dye, these fabrics are both visually striking and culturally rich. Their patterns of lines, dots, spirals, and organic forms often carry social status or spiritual meaning, while the deep indigo blue evokes protection, dignity, and resilience.

The display titled "Senegal ’75. Més enllà de vestir" not only showcases textiles acquired during a 1975 field expedition to Senegal, but also critically revisits the museum’s expedition methods and challenges the colonial-era narratives that shaped the collection. Through video interviews with three Senegalese women living in Barcelona, it raises important questions about why many of these objects remain in storage rather than returned to Africa or made accessible to the African diaspora in Catalonia.

A large video projection featured a documentary about the 1975 expedition. What stood out most to me was the reference to Papisto Boy (Pape Mamadou Samb), Senegal’s first graffiti artist. A self-taught muralist who viewed his art as a spiritual calling, he transformed Dakar’s public walls into vibrant expressions of faith, resilience, Senegalese culture, and social commentary. His most iconic work, a 200-meter mural on the exterior of a Bel-Air factory, was created to inspire workers and reclaim public space for the community.

The mural features a striking mix of figures including Jimi Hendrix, Nelson Mandela, and Malcolm X (slide 1), as well as Muhammad Ali, Che Guevara, Jimmy Carter, the Senegalese singer Fatou Guewel, and Mame Diarra Bousso, a Sufi saint from Senegal (slide 2).

https://www.barcelona.cat/museu-etnologic-culturesmon/ca/node/2426

Barcelona Staycation

23/03/2026

17/03/2026

17/03/2026

15/03/2026

06/03/2026

27/02/2026

27/02/2026

12/02/2026

14/08/2025

08/08/2025

07/08/2025

05/08/2025

Dirección

Teléfono

Página web

Notificaciones

Contacto La Empresa

Atajos

Compartir

Categoría