An incoherent whole: The impossible art of curating.
A coherent whole. It’s a hard task. To select works of art, and display them in a space. With a certainty that assures our attention not just to the feel of the room, but to each and every individual piece. This week I went to four shows and each one lacked something of the completeness, the roundedness I was looking for.
Starting at Galeria Alonso Vidal were works by Fernando Molero, “La Luz de las horas”. He has been playing with some themes of light and circles and lines, but ultimately has not accomplished much. There is a dot of bright light convened from chiaroscuro in some of the paintings, which seems to be a theme. But not across all the works. There are lines in all the works, whether straight or curved, but they don’t feel like a theme. There are a few people around, and a few sperm-like motifs. But in the end I’m not sure if it’s the space itself.
Rather than being the typical white cube, the gallery looks like a cheap lingerie store, with fake tan coloured walls, and shop windows which used to hold boxes of pantyhose and knickers, now propping up smaller works, often from previous exhibitions. It’s amazing how forgiving you can be when looking at great art, for this was the very space whose last show was of Ricardo Álvarez. But looking at mediocre art in a distracting setting does not encourage anyone to consider how it might look on their walls at home, as part of their collection. The saving grace might have been the filling pica pica and bubbly cava, which they always put on, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was on my scooter. Getting tipsy wasn’t an option.
Round the corner to Ámbit Galeria d’Art and a show by Inka Martí, a journalist turned photographer. The gallery has some big walls, and took advantage of them with these landscapes, a few of which were outstanding. There was a story to be told, a story of pathos and longing, of loss and mourning, of ennui and saudade. The proportions of “Barca y línea d’infinit” (2015), at 40 x 160 cm make you want to step further and further back so you can take in more and more. “Rellotge d’hexagrames” (2014) creates a dizzying sense of unease. The colour palette of washed out whites suits these works perfectly. But the show as a whole is let down by photographs which don’t somehow fulfil their promise; they look better on the website than in real life.
It’s a hard task, for an artist to create a body of work substantial enough to fulfil the needs of an exhibition. And while I like the physical space of Ámbit, with its walls broken up into sections, and the small mezzanine, it makes the curator’s job more complicated. Choosing works which will sit comfortably in the space is a difficult consideration, made more complicated by the gallerist’s need to sell.
There is, though, a magic wall upstairs. In this show it held “La boca del silenci” (2015), and in a previous show, it held Allison Malinksy’s “All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.” (2014). I don’t know if it is the magic of walking into a space and having your breathe taken away as you turn round, or the magic of the perfect dimensions of the wall to highlight a single, large painting. But it’s magic.
The fairy stories of Vanessa Linares at Jordi Barnadas, “No som gotes, som onades” (We are not droplets, we are waves) are mainly illustrations for an unmade children’s book. There has been a tendency in Barcelona over the last few years to confuse illustration with art. Illustration, at its best, adds to the words of the story; it signals the ambience of an event; without words it can lead a narrative; it illustrates.
And where she has kept to a theme, and given us a title to the illustration, as in “Lluna plena”, there is a sense of integrity; wholeness of and within itself. It’s full moon, and the animals are enjoying the nocturnal light. And while it’s whimsical, it has some depth. But “Tarda de diumenge” is a confusing mish mash of styles which to my eye do not sit comfortably together. Shoehorning Vermeer’s “Girl with a pearl earring” into the mix doesn’t help. Maybe Sunday afternoon is not the calm relaxing time for Linares that it should be for someone who lives in Barcelona. And this feeling is wrought throughout the show, with a confusion of styles that don’t hang well. It would take a niche collector to find a happy home for them.
And so finally, on to the show I was most looking forward to, at Galeria Esther Montoriol, “Flors”. Lots of flowers. And, unluckily, 13 artists. But no, this is a well curated show, with a variety of work going back over a decade, though mostly recent. These are clearly artists who have just got on with their thing, and one of those things happens to have been a few flower pictures picked and arranged to delight the senses. They have been selected to sit together in a great space with lots of room to breathe.
There is work for every taste, mostly paintings, one video, some ceramics and a few photos. It would have helped if the weather in Barcelona had been more consistently Spring-like over the last couple of weeks, and we’d been able to get out and see some real flowers budding to put us in the mood. And it would have helped if we had had more of a sense of who these artists are. Looking at their websites, we see that many of the works shown here are taken completely out of context of the oeuvre.
For some, the flower is an object like any other, and painting it is more of an exercise in technique or texture than an exploration of the very soul of a flower. For others, for those who have lived and breathed every petal, every filament, every stigma, every sepal, the flower transmits the whole of life. But a group show is always a compromise, always a trade off between the vision of the artist and the vision of the curator.
And, let’s not forget, the gallerist needs to sell some work. And so a fairly conservative spring show might be just the ticket to try and create a few new collectors. Collectors who hopefully will look into the artist’s back catalogue and see some delicious, wild, unexpected things, and be turned on to art as art, not decoration.
