La Pedrera. Arts Santa Mònica.

Barcelona was full of events and activities all over the city this last weekend. I decided to visit two different exhibitions, one at La Pedrera and the other at Arts Santa Mònica.

La Pedrera: Open Works. Art in Motion, 1955-1975

This exhibition had all the ingredients to be ideal (for me). Works by 37 international artists aiming to engage the 'spectators' and make them participants in the artwork. On the other hand, many of them play with optical illusions, work with visual perception, movement... And of course, many of the works in the exhibition incorporate technology.

And what I like the most is discovering new artists:

Arts Santa Mònica: Festival Kronos Art 2018

After La Pedrera, I had time to make a last-minute visit to the Kronos Art Festival at Arts Santa Mònica. A multidisciplinary festival of contemporary art that explores the passage of time through the works of various artists from the past, present, and future.

Thoughts

What is most surprising to me about this type of work, especially the ones on display at La Pedrera, is the date of their creation. Just like in a Jean Tinguely exhibition, where the works with antique mechanisms functioned periodically to keep them in good condition. I find it very interesting how they preserve works with these mechanisms, similar to contemporary digital works/installations. It's very likely that the software (and hardware) used today will quickly become obsolete... How can digital works be preserved?

In this same exhibition, there was also Duchamp's work.:

And it served as inspiration for me to experiment a bit with Processing 🙂 The result:

“I force myself to contradict myself to avoid conforming to my own taste”