Do you trust things to write human history? Do things’ lives matter? Can a pebble destroy an empire if the emperor chokes at dinner? Would the pebble stand accused? Do you really think that if you stare at something long enough, it will reveal its secrets? Have you ever wondered why there is a hole in a donut? Did you ever own a pair of dungarees? Does a desire to write about a small car indicate some fear of its inadequacy? Does popcorn hold firm opinions? Is the key key? Are you familiar with the Luddites? Have you heard the expressions “how long is a piece of string?”, or “exceptional typical”?
The exhibition ‘Things Things Say’ springs from the past of Fabra i Coats as an industrial complex once dedicated to the manufacturing of cotton thread. The factory represented the first merger between a Catalan company and a foreign multinational and the first in Spain to offer its workers paid holidays. The exhibition evokes this novel and curious kind of place, a place comprised of many places and people, vastly different scales, temporalities, and values. Things, and spectres of things, that might at first seem exceptionally normal, apparently obsolete, or inert, each bring often-extraordinary stories or offer telling evidence, temporarily becoming new protagonists in the art centre community.
In the setting of the bygone factory, the works in the exhibition introduce a perspective on how the modern world has been shaped through complex and contentious relationships between humans and the web of life. Taking on the popular XVIII century genre of the ‘it-narrative’ in English literature and the approach of ‘object journalism’ against a background of world history and ecology, ‘Things Things Say’ and the exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter’ (CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017–18) are imagined as a diptych: two folds with the same hinge that tacks back-and-forth between deep time and microhistory, natural history and the history of capitalism.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturdays, 12 to 8 pm Sunday and Holidays, 11 to 3 pm Free guided tours every Saturday at 18 pm and Sundays at 12:30 pm Limited capacity. Pre-registration at centredart@bcn.cat
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Save the date: 19 September 2018 at 7 pm, opening Joan Morey ‘COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine’, Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats 3 September 2018
Photo report: Trip to Berlin Gallery Weekend 2018 and Cologne 9 May 2018
Works by Stuart Whipps in the exhibition ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2017–18.
Work by Sarah Ortmeyer in the exhibition 'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes & des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne', Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, 2011.
Work by Haegue Yang in the exhibition ‘Sequelism Part 3: Possible, Probable, or Preferable Futures’, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2009.
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