FACES. A dialogue between the Es Baluard Museu Collection and the BEEP Electronic Art Collection

At Es Baluard Museu, we continue to present exhibition projects where our collection is linked to and collaborates with other public and private collections, and on this occasion it continues with the research and dissemination of the advance of contemporary art practices which use the image and new technology, also reflected in the “Reproductibilitat” series of exhibitions which began in 2013.

As a result of all this, for the year 2019, and coinciding with the 15^th anniversary of Es Baluard Museu, we have invited the BEEP Electronic Art Collection to enter into dialogue with our own collection on the main floor of the museum.

Curators’ text:

“All that we know is our own impression, and all that we are is an exterior impression”.
Fernando Pessoa

The exhibition sets forth a constructive, transversal reading of the creative processes of different generations of artists and their research on the concept of portrait.

The objective is to find common points and unexpected interpretations of works, often including very different ones. On the one hand we have the contemporary art works of the Es Baluard Collection and on the other, the works of the BEEP Electronic Art Collection, the vast majority of which are interactive. The latter represent one of the most innovative expressions of contemporary creation, characterised by introducing new paradigms such as interactivity and participation.

It will be almost impossible to compare such diverse stages and styles and confront works by Picasso, Miró or Barceló with the robotic and electronic art pieces of artists such as Lugán, Marcel.lí Antúnez or Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Our aim is to approach the portrait from an anthropological perspective, because these faces represent us at a certain moment in history.

Moreover, whilst until now in some way, in artistic practice the portrait has been the representation of an absence, with electronic and digital art this absence is reassessed thanks to the constructive, enriching presence of the public during the creative process.

The exhibition seeks to establish a dialogue between works in different media. The dialogues may arise from common interpretations, similitudes, subliminal analogies or be merely alluded dialogues, which can push the public towards a creative reading of the works. We aspire to break the immovable fourth wall between the contemporary art public who are accustomed to touching electronic artworks and make them perceive other nuances of interpretation in traditional works. The route through the exhibition is laid out as a continuum, in which visitors will be able to perceive similitudes or resemblances which, in the exhibition space, unfurl in an open, rhizomatic way.

Our goal is for all the works to engage in dialogue with one another and thus, for the public to be able to circulate freely around the exhibition, exercising crucial analysis and taking part in the proposals for dialogue we suggest to them without any need to define strict parameters of interpretation. It is not a question of confronting electronic art and traditional visual art, it is not about winning a contest between different disciplines; the objective is to offer a creative, participatory narrative, inviting the public to mix and maintain an active attitude, or rather an interactive attitude, coming face-to-face with works which share a single common theme: that of the portrait. In addition, we feel this is an opportunity to inject new life into and activate the more conventional works.

The BEEP Electronic Art Collection is the result of the artistic patronage of Andreu Rodríguez, president of the TICNOVA Group. Over the 13 years of its existence, the primordial objective of the collection has been to act as a witness and agent of the transgression created from the intersection between art, science and technology. Linked from the start to the ARCOmadrid Contemporary Art Fair, through the ARCO BEEP Electronic Art Award, it has gathered together a set of electronic and digital artworks which is extremely important and significant on an international level, summing up the tendencies and evolution of artistic practices related to the new technological media.