Pandemic, mutations and contemporary art, at Caixaforum

In full lockdown, in the spring and summer of 2020, the commissioner of ‘The next mutation’, Xavier Acarín, the idea that runs through this new Caixaforum exhibition: “How to understand the pandemic And the moment in which we live when we want to return to a normality that will not return, in a context of climate crisis? “ contemporary art collections from La Caixa and Macba Foundation, with artists like Dora garcia (which this Tuesday won the National Prize for Plastic Arts), Francesc Torres, Nacho Criado, Antoni Llena, Félix González-Torres, Joan Jonas or Eva Fàbregas.

“The pandemic is the portal that takes us to another dimension in the relationships of human beings with other species with which we live, to understand our position in that ecosystem. The virus is the subversive agent that arises and changes the norm and causes change, accelerates inequalities and first global crisis due to climate change. It shows us that we live in a system of production and consumption that destroys and puts us in danger of mass extinction. And the mutation is the pressure that makes us change the way we relate to the world with an ecological thought “, details the curator of an exhibition that can be visited until February 13 and that is part of the program to support the artistic creation of the center.

The ruined building in the suburbs of Paris showing large format photography ‘Pile of Rubble ‘, by Cyprien Gaillard, shows for example, Acarín points out, “that we are in the process of deconstruction towards chaos. He did it in 2008, in the middle of the financial and mortgage crisis and shows that we are part of the destruction of the planet”.

Live without accumulating

Symbol of capitalism and conquest, but also of light and wisdom, it is the gold that evokes ‘Golden Bag’, the 1995 work of Dora garcia that, placed in a corner, “attracts and seduces us at the same time that it challenges us, because we do not know if behind it it hides something that is unknown to us”. And in the call not to fall into consumer life is framed ‘Proposal for a cabin’, from Absalon, Israeli artist who died of AIDS at the age of 28: in a video, he shows a prototype of an austere capsule where to live in isolation, built thinking of fleeing from “the need to accumulate things or to receive visitors.”

Tour the exhibition a critical sense of power, like the one that comes off the ‘dissected sculpture’ that Antoni Llena made with ephemeral and fluid materials in 1968, a time of revolts against authoritarianism, or the piece of Francesc Torres, ‘Prototype for an unlimited edition’. He invites the visitor to participate, who for the first time can take a free copy of this cardboard and build a large irregular orange cube following his instructions. The infinite reproduction of the work and its insertion into everyday life, beyond the exhibition, is a revolutionary possibility that entails an equality, points out the commissioner. The piece ‘3 points’, by Àngels Ribé, also needs the viewer. By moving around it, the play of light enables a fourth point, wondering about the insertion of the body in space.

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The mistery

From a wall it opens questions about the intention of its creator, Nacho Criado, ‘Discoidales’, a 1985 piece rescued six months ago from the Fundació’s collection. “There are almost no references to it, but the artist’s interest in witchcraft and history leads us to think of a magical mechanism that, depending on the rotation that is given, will reveal a mystery.” An old map and the semi-hidden date of 1519 could point to the colonization of Mexico by the Spanish, who infected the Indians with a devastating smallpox epidemic. 500 years later we know what it means.