Carles Guerra. Painting and Pseudo-Painting. In Memoriam: Mel Ramsden

“Thinking about Painting” series is a programme of lectures that includes expert voices from artists and curators, reflecting on the issues presented in the exhibition trilogy “Nachleben. Painting as Conceptual Art,” which will run throughout 2025 at Es Baluard Museu.
Painting and Pseudo-Painting. In Memoriam: Mel Ramsden is the title of the talk to be given by curator and researcher Carles Guerra next Thursday, June 3.

Mel Ramsden (1944–2024), an artist associated with the Art & Language collective since the late 1960s, passed away in July of last year. His work emerged from painting and he returned to it. However, his greatest contribution came in the context of practices linked to conceptual art. As he defined it, a transitional art that, despite seemingly ending with painting, never excluded it. This lecture is intended as a tribute to this member of Art & Language who—in the interviews he shared with Michael Baldwin, his most faithful partner from the late 1970s until his death—always delivered the shortest and most incisive sentences. His way of speaking about painting transcended the medium’s modern teleology and thus, unintentionally, turned it into a refuge for survival in an art world burdened by the delusions of neoliberalism.

Carles Guerra (Amposta, 1965) is a teacher, researcher, and independent curator.
His research interests include modern and contemporary art, critical pedagogies, and museum studies. Guerra has served as director of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, chief curator of MACBA, executive director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, and member of the Collège de photographie et image animée at the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP). In 2023, he was appointed inaugural visiting professor in Catalan Studies at New York University – Institut Ramon Llull.

His latest project is an exhibition and research project dedicated to the Catalan psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles (Musée les Abattoirs, CCCB, Museo Reina Sofía, and American Folk Art Museum). Recent publications include Restitutions: Photography in Debt to the Past (KBr MAPFRE) and Josep Royo: An Open Form That Falls with Weight (Museo de Arte Moderno de la Diputación de Tarragona).

In 2026, he will be the chief curator of the Spanish pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, where he will present a project by artist Oriol Vilanova.