MACBA was the only museum I had heard of before coming to Barcelona. In 2015, I attended a course on curatorial ethics; in a happy coincidence, MACBA presented the show called The Beast and the Sovereign the same year. Well, I must say it might have been happy for us, as it gave plenty of material to consider and ponder over; there is a reason to believe the museum had a rather hard time back then, though. The matter is that one piece within this exhibition, namely, Ines Doujak’s controversial Not Dressed for Conquering, elicited rather mixed reactions amongst the Museum staff, to put it mildly. To make it stronger, the exhibition caused a great scandal on the issue of censorship and entailed the resignation of MACBA’s director and its curators.

Upon entering the space, you grasp what the notion of a ‘white cube gallery’ exactly means. The four-floored modern building, where the Museum settles, reminds of the sterile space of a hospital. Grandiose as it is, MACBA is minimalistic, reserved and pretty cold. For some mysterious reason, it succeeds in creating the effect of a distance between you, the spectator, and the exhibits, even though no old-fashioned velvet museum ropes can be detected anywhere. 

Four floors dispose of five exhibitions. Upon entrance to every one of them, there is a brochure that supposedly enlightens you on the key concepts and ideas behind a show. But let’s have a look at them one by one, agreed?

1. MACBA Collection. Beneath the Surface

Arguably, the most fascinating exhibition in the Museum. As can be guessed from the title, it deals with the notion of the surface, no matter if it is a painting, a sculpture or a video artwork. Walking through the halls, you may see very intriguing and thought-provoking exhibits, along with the ones that you pass by, not bothering to stop. There are also some artworks that tempt you to walk past casually, but then you read the information piece and come to reconsider your first impression. Personally, I like those latter most of all, as it is sometimes challenging for me to open up for something I don’t feel like accepting intuitively and at first glance. To give some illustrations of what you can expect there.

a) Jordi Colomer “Frase (Der Wachtturm)” (1991)

If you look at this exhibit without looking into it, you will see a bunch of objects attached to the wall. Yet, giving your vision some time to get used to what is there and distinguish the things, you will first notice the quotation marks. That will sparkle a light of understanding: the things are quoted; instead of using two- or three-dimensional words that would refer to some material things, the artist uses the objects themselves. It is as if they have finally plucked up the courage (or have been given a chance) to speak for themselves, to show their true faces without being mediated by a language and its signs. It’s funny that when we mention real things, words become as if a euphemism, hiding the real. At the same time, they are the only way to make the abstract ideas alive. Ambiguous they are, the words.

b) Angela de la Cruz “Cluster VII (Yellow)” (2004)

For me, this piece stands as an excellent illustration of how a good idea (intellectual concept) may turn into somewhat rather dull upon implementation (visual representation). The artist has transformed the painting – an artwork in itself – into a sculpture by folding it in every possible way.

Some of the philosophical grounds one may reveal behind it: the exploration of the differences (if there are any) between a painting and a sculpture (e.g. 2D vs. 3D, space that the sculptural exhibit requires around itself vs. the attachment and the absence of physical volume of the painted image); the destruction that leads to creation. Yet, the result doesn’t really look appealing (to me, at least). It is something I may probably want to think about but not to see.

c) Doris Salcedo “Atrabiliarios [1], [2] and [3]” (1993)

I honestly didn’t expect to see it at MACBA but was all the more impressed by this work. It was the first face-to-face encounter, although I had read about before. To tell you a bit of a story: Doris Salcedo used to collaborate with the families suffered the civil war and drug trafficking in Colombia. Sometimes, the only way to identify the person was by recognising their shoes. You see them installed into the wall, behind a translucent parchment. The effect it creates is truly uncanny: I found it hard to leave the space and kept coming back to have another look. I don’t know why; perhaps, it is the work’s loud, intense physicality? The memory / old photography-like ambience? The vague wall distinguishing this world and that of the pass(ed)? The stitches that create quite a dissonance with the gentle lifelessness? The niches as such, reminding of shoe boxes for dead hamsters and pet rats, these coffins in miniature?

There were other exhibits worth a glance and a thought, but discussing all of them in length would take a while. Go and see!

2. Oscar Masotta. Theory as Action 

If you read the brochure they tacitly offer to take at the entrance, there is a chance you will have a better experience of the exhibition. What I mean to say, the expo doesn’t consistently provide you with the necessary information on what you see while you are inside. At least, in English; the essential pieces of information (2-3) are translated indeed, but the blocks of text and different quotes that the curators have apparently found less significant are given in Spanish only. I genuinely appreciate when the information on the walls overlaps with that in the brochure; you follow the organic flow of a story unfolding in front of your eyes/mind and may take it home. If I can understand the exhibits only by looking at the paper in my hands (if I have it there at all), I always feel excluded. That is, the experience is disrupted: I need to switch between the info in the information sheet and the exhibits, and it may be (and often is) quite tiring. So I give up and move on.

The introductory text claims the exhibition has been being prepared (have I just used the Present Perfect Continuous passive indeed? Is it legal?) for several years, and this is where the trap for the curatorial team is sometimes hidden. I do believe that if you work on something for a long time, you need to get the outsider’s impression of it before presenting the work to the public at large. Otherwise, you run the risk of not explaining the ideas or concepts that came to become evident for you while being too meticulous on unfolding mostly needless details (sounds cruel, I know). It seems the curators haven’t avoided this fate: after examining the first hall, I had to come back to the introductory statement twice to understand what Mascota actually did and was famous for. The number of exhibits is quite overwhelming for 3 halls. You don’t really know where to go, what to start with; the logic of a narrative is not obvious. The overall impression: confusion.

It may be an excellent expo if you are at least slightly familiar with the name and the deeds of Oscar Mascotta. Unfortunately, that was not my case.

3. Domènec. Not Here, Not Anywhere

You may feel exclusion within the previous exhibition if you are rather sensitive towards such issues; here this feeling becomes crystal clear and thus inevitable. All inscriptions are in Spanish or Catalan; the non-English videos are subtitled only in Spanish and Catalan as well. The brochure is urged to save you from the information vacuum but doesn’t comfort you to the point of actually enjoying the space. Personally, I am not keen on architectural forms the show is concentrated on either, so I moved further without feeling sorry about it.

4. Francesc Torres. The Hermetic Bell. Space for a Non-Transferable Anthropology.

To be fair, it is one of the most curious things I have seen lately. With one room comprising everything, this expo is less than teeny. Before relocating yourself inside, you stumble upon a tiny yellow taxi car and a text that might remind you of your own childhood: what association do you have with a taxi? Torres gives the ‘right’ answer: celebration. You didn’t use to go to school in a taxi; you took a bus. You didn’t use to go to work there either; you took a metro. A taxi meant something special, out-of-the-ordinary. This little story-memory has immediately adjusted me to his wave; when I came inside, I was expecting something wonderful, and it was there indeed.

Although it doesn’t look like an exhibition space at all (and I wouldn’t call it art either), this room, resembling an attic, is somewhat to visit and experience face-to-face indeed. That is, the bunch of things – personal collections, peculiar souvenirs, odd tokens, archaeological findings – create a warm feeling of being at someone’s house for the first time. You know, when you exercise the right to scrutinise the setting with sincere interest and ask questions about whatever you find especially funny.

5. Melanie Smith. Farce and Artifice

I actually liked the fact the curators had chosen an artist, interested in a variety of themes and tools. That is something I find problematic in the oeuvre of some prominent artists of the 20th century; they have seemingly found their niche and just stuck to it till the end of their lives (e.g. Barnett Newman or Jackson Pollock). Melanie Smith seems to enjoy thinking complexly and across different media, and does so with no tangible difficulty. That makes it pleasant to observe her narratives and exciting to unfold her stories. You see some objects that appear to go hand-in-hand due to their colour, then you see a bunch of items that compile nicely without any easily-traced logic, then you see a film, then you discover a play upon Michail Bakhtin’s theory, peculiarly coupled and reconsidered within the paintings of Bruegel, then you face a huge sculptural ear. The sensation of unpredictability this exhibition gives you is a right way to finish the MACBA visit with, what would you say?