June 17, 2023–January 7, 2024
MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León is pleased to present its new exhibition season, running June 17, 2023–January 7, 2024.
Exothermia: Semiotics of Placement in the MUSAC Collection
This group exhibition recreates an 18th-century gallery in order to foster a discussion into exhibition design typologies and the assignment of value to works of art. Exothermia takes as an example the installation process created at the Royal Academy of Arts in London where, starting from an imaginary line above the visitor’s head, a hierarchy of placement is established in relation to the different genres of painting. Along this imaginary line, large-format portraits and history paintings predominate, with other works located above or below the line.
How can we transpose this approach to exhibiting art works into the metalanguage that is curatorial work today? Can we interpret this method from a contemporary standpoint? Can we propose a semiotic analysis by establishing new relationships and, consequently, new ways of seeing and understanding works of art? Working with a contemporary collection, the translation of this approach is not automatic. Instead, it forces us to reinterpret the position of the works, to find new connections and systems of classification. This series of interpretations of the collection focuses on the study of formal aspects of the museum space as a setting for other possibilities and highlights the idea of the exhibition as a tool for seduction and knowledge.
Exothermia includes works by Artists’ Poster Committee of Art Workers Coalition, Eugenio Ampudia, Dan Attoe, Txomin Badiola, Antonio Ballester Moreno, Gabriele Basilico, Natividad Bermejo, Bleda y Rosa, Alán Carrasco, Gregory Crewdson, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Marcel Dzama, Roland Fischer, Till Freiwald, Philipp Fröhlich, Alberto García-Alix, Anthony Goicolea, Piero Golia, Candida Höfer, Zhang Huan, Isaac Julien, Immo Klink, Ellen Kooi, Leonilson, Lysippos, Jen Liu, Marcos López, Cristina Lucas, Lovett/Codagnone, Josephine Meckseper, Julie Mehretu, Yasumasa Morimura, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Muntean/Rosenblum, Shirin Neshat, Tatiana Parcero, Concha Pérez, Polykleitos , Praxiteles, Gonzalo Puch, Caio Reisewitz, Thomas Ruff, Ixone Sádaba, Yinka Shonibare, Sam Taylor-Wood, Delhy Tejero, Belén Uriel, Xavier Veilhan, Nicola Verlato, Akram Zaatari.
Juan Ugalde: The Ship of Fools
Through more than ninety works, this first retrospective exhibition devoted to Juan Ugalde (Bilbao, Spain, 1958) displays four decades of the artist’s work (1982–2022). Ugalde, a key name in Spanish contemporary painting, began his career in the early 1980s within the context of the so-called “Movida madrileña”. Since the 1990s, his work has been characterized by the fusion of painting and photography. His pieces can be found in the country’s main collections, such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Artium, Museo Patio Herreriano, Colección Banco de España, Colección Marcelino Botín, among others.
The collage constitutes the core of the artist’s multifaceted oeuvre, which brings together not only painting but also video, installation, performance, or his participation in different artistic collectives of a socio-political nature such as the historical Estrujenbank (1989-1993) and the current Imagina escorial.
This unprecedented exhibition consists of a presentation of an accumulation of his works, a sort of “collage of his collages”, marked by an experience of excess and maelstrom that permeates the aesthetics of the artist.
Tatiana Parcero: MUSAC Collection Case Study
Through the “Collection Case Studies” project, the museum’s Showcase Space becomes a place to study the artworks and authors that make up the MUSAC Collection, displaying both the art pieces and the studies and research carried out around them. This case study looks at the work of the artist Tatiana Parcero (Mexico City, 1967) through pieces from the series Cartografía Interior, Actos de fe and Re-invento.
Tatiana Parcero began working with photography in the 1980s and, since the early 1990s, has focused her artwork on the body and the self-portrait. She incorporates various mechanical techniques of photography, digital imaging and video, with which she portrays the human body in search of the reconstruction of experiences and concepts such as identity, memory and territory.
