From Thursday 14 to Sunday 17 May, the fourth edition of The Collector is Present is held, the spring art event that arises from the collaboration between art collectors and gallerists. Organized by Barcelona Gallery Weekend, the exhibition is held in 15 galleries in Barcelona, l’Hospitalet de Llobregat and Santa Margarida i els Monjos (Penedès).
The result is an agenda of exhibitions, meetings, presentations, guided tours, walks and conversations open free of charge to all citizens, in which collectors explain in first person what led them to start buying art or their personal relationship with gallerists and artists, among other aspects.
The program The Collector is Present will be the preamble to the 12th edition of Barcelona Gallery Weekend, which will be held from September 17 to 20 in 25 galleries in Barcelona and l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. However, these galleries can always be visited free of charge.
The program of The Collector is Present
The exhibition brings together the proposals that 15 gallerists and 19 collectors have jointly built to be shown in the galleries. The program combines exhibitions and activities from Thursday 14 to Sunday 17 May that revolve around collecting and invite reflection on the acquisition of art as a fundamental piece for a sustainable artistic ecosystem.
Regarding the program, ADN Galeria inaugurates Present Archaeologies, an exhibition with works by the industrial engineer, art historian and collector Antonio Toca (AT Colección), which reflects on how an art collection evolves from initial intuition to achieving its own voice, moving from a fortuitous selection to a conscious one. On Thursday 14 and Saturday 16 May, Antonio Toca will offer guided tours of the exhibition.
The artist Jordi Mitjà presents Das ist nicht meine Familie / This is not my family at Bombon Projects, a collection of found slides documenting the life of a German family on the Costa Brava in the 80s. On Saturday 16 May, Mitjà will project a selection with a Kodak Carousel projector, within the framework of the individual exhibition he will have at the gallery.
The Prats Nogueras Blanchard gallery collaborates with photographer Roberto Ruiz, a singular figure in the contemporary cultural panorama, whose sensibility transcends his own work to extend towards a collection built through friendships and affinities. The photographer will show a selection of artists such as Cristina Garrido, Ignacio Uriarte, David Mutiloa, Pere Llobera, among others, which reveals the invisible threads that unite a collection: a personal history, conceptual affinities, and the questions that an art lover carries within without always knowing it. On Saturday, May 16, there will be a meeting with the photographer in the context of the exhibition.
Sorondo Projects invites collector Laura del Arco to activate the upper floor of the gallery with Essays on Self-Representation, an exhibition that presents four artists –two from her collection and two from the gallery's program– around the axis of female self-representation. On Thursday, May 14, the collector will converse with Hodei Herreros and Arale Reartes, two of the artists from the gallery's program, to talk about how personal narrative is constructed and how the mechanisms of the gaze are inverted.
Victor Lope Arte Contemporáneo and collector Manu Expósito inaugurate on Thursday, May 14 The Scheroff Universe – Manuel Expósito Collection, an exhibition of the visual universe of artist Miguel Scheroff, where the figurative, the symbolic, and the fantastic coexist in intense compositions starring animals, human figures, and elements of nature. Coinciding with the inauguration, on Thursday, May 14, there will be a conversation with the artist and the collector, and on Saturday, May 16, they will offer a guided tour.
Meetings with the collectors
Under the title Ways of caring. Collecting from patronage, Isidre and Jordi Bohigas, responsible for Piramidón Contemporary Art Center, will speak at FUGA about the acquisition process through patronage, based on the piece by Lena Laguna Diel awarded with the Piramidón Acquisition and Residencies Award. The event, on Saturday, May 16, will be accompanied by a vermouth and will take place within the framework of the artist's second monographic exhibition at the gallery.
The collectors Lluís Guilera, José Luis González and Maria Clara Arbelaez Pardo meet on Friday 15 at Pigment Gallery around Francesca Poza's exhibition to share each of their personal connections with the artist's practice and reflect on the relationship between textile practice, art and collecting.
The proposal by ProjecteSD and collector Asier Tapia is inserted into Asier Mendizabal's new exhibition at the gallery. Both will react to Stilfragen (crania) (2016), a work by Mendizabal that is part of the Tapia collection, to link other works by the artist (which are not part of his new exhibition) to it, and articulate a formal and conceptual exercise in which collector Asier Tapia, Asier Mendizabal and ProjecteSD are accomplices. The resulting installation will be presented on Thursday, May 14 and can be visited until Saturday.
The RocioSantaCruz gallery hosts two meetings within the framework of the exhibition Ouka Leele. Barcelona. On Friday, May 15, Unpublished works by Ouka Leele in Pepe Ribas's archive, a dialogue between Pepe Ribas, collector and director of Ajoblanco magazine, and gallerist Rocío Santa Cruz, during which unpublished materials from the collector's archive will be shown –poems, letters, interviews and magazines that will be added to the exhibition and can only be seen during The Collector is Present weekend– in addition to presenting the facsimile edited for the occasion. On Saturday, Ouka Leele in the Foto Colectania collection will bring together Pepe Font de Mora, from the Foto Colectania Foundation, María Rosenfeldt, Ouka Leele's daughter and director of the artist's archive, and the gallerist (Saturday, May 16).
Hand in hand with Suburbia Contemporary, collector Josselin Souris proposes a walk through Barcelona alongside artists Gregory Thielker, Mar Hernández and Peter Eastman, during which they will discuss drawing and painting, themes represented in the exhibition of the three artists at the gallery, Looks Can Kill. Prior reservation and practical information at info@suburbiacontemporary.com.
Collecting, under debate
At Dilalica, artist Lucía Bayón and Mónica Carroquino, director of Catapulta, a new platform that seeks to promote Spanish contemporary art on the international scene, will meet in a dialogue about the relationships between artistic practice, promotion, collecting, and international circulation. During the meeting, which will be held on Friday, May 15, they will address how visibility circuits for artists are built or the role of contemporary collecting, capable of projecting artistic trajectories.
At Escat Gallery, Young Collecting in Contemporary Art will be a networking space led by collectors Manuel Expósito and Carlos Muñoz. After a presentation by both, led by communicator Carmen Corbera, in which they will share their journeys, motivations, and criteria for building a collection, a participatory space will open to share tools, knowledge, and experiences with the aim of demystifying collecting and bringing it closer to new generations. It will be on Thursday, May 14.
From the studio to the institution: construction of narratives and mechanisms of legitimation brings together at ethall Gemma Avinyó, cultural manager and deputy director of Fundació Sorigué, artist Àlex Palacín, and gallerist Jorge Bravo. The debate will take place on Saturday, May 16, coinciding with the inauguration of “Jabulani. An exact roundness,” the exhibition curated by Palacín over 15 years of ethall's programming.
On Saturday, May 16, SELTZ by Ritter Ferrer hosts Rewriting the narrative, women and contemporary collecting, a conversation with Natalia Foguet, director of Fundació Úniques, artist Mónica Jover Calvo, Pepa Reverter, representative in Catalonia of MAV (Mujeres en las Artes Visuales), and José Luis Pérez Pont, art critic and curator. They will address acquisition criteria, structural biases of the market and institutions, as well as the responsibility of collecting, both public and private, in shaping a more inclusive canon.
All information and program for The Collector is Present at barcelonagalleryweekend.com and map with participating galleries here.
