There were three shows on at Arts Santa Monica when I went, a small one of Isabel Banal i Xifre's table top works, one on drawing, and another looking at scenery
The table top works were my favourite, it was the kind of room which throws up alot of questions and I felt like I really wanted to chat to the artist and discuss why the works weren't on the floor or shown in another way. I felt like I trusted her judgement too though, so it was a tiny room with only 5 works but was really engaging.
Trace, Drawing as a Tool of Knowledge, was set up beautifully. It was split into four themes and each theme had a room to itself, separated by plastic curtains, that you had to push through to get into the new room.
Drawings were shown on the wall and underneath glass on tables, allowing a lot of drawings to be seen together. It was easy-viewing, the number of drawings on display meant I glanced through all on them but only really looked at the ones which grabbed me.
Tale of the Beautiful False Things looked at scenery. A couple of the works stood out to me; there was a video work I'm sure I have seen before but can't remember where, about children playing and the way they affect and interact with their environmant and each other. It is always strange seeing a work you have seen before in a different city at a different time, it is a little disconcerting as you always have a different opinion of it, or realise you have misremembered it.
Pictured below is the work I liked the most, unsurprisingly for anyone who knows my work. It is (translated) 'Painting of Olot which has Given Olot it's Image Back' by Perejaume and consists of a canvas (presumably painted on) which has been dismantled, and presented in a perspex box with the title. I felt my lack of Catalan here though as I couldn't read the title at the time, and as you see it's pretty integral to the work.
The MACBA is a great building - not necessarily from the outside, but the atrium is lovely - it's a huge white, bright space. There's a great Lawrence Weiner work running the length of the far wall and the way up to the galleries is a series of slopes against the window. There is a huge sense of space and light.
Aside from the atrium I wasn't so taken with the MACBA as a space, it was very awkward to walk around. If you go to, for example, any of the Tates - you walk around a show and are thrown back into the atrium at the end. At the MACBA however you go in and out of rooms, start in the middle one, have to find the next and then walk back to find the last room. It's quite distracting when you're trying to look at a whole show. It's also interesting to note that the invigilators in MACBA are more like security guards than invigilators, there to protect the work than answer any questions on it, they certainly seem hired out and unapproachable.
The image above shows a room that was tucked away at the end of the atrium. All the works in there were replicas and you were encouraged to 'approach the collection with your senses'. This was a great thing to be able to do, and it felt really strange to be asked to touch works on display! I got alot out of it and think it would be a geat thing to tag on to most shows, a room of replicas you can touch and engage with in a different way.
The shows I saw were- Oskar Hansen, Open Form; The Immaterial Legacy, An Essay on the Collection and Art & Language Uncompleted.
Oskar Hansen, Open Form was interesting and I liked the way it was laid out. One of the pieces told of a polish apartment block, when it was being built the authorities had allowed the future residents to draw where they wanted the dividing walls in their apartments, so they could make the kitchen/living areas bigger/smaller as they liked. Unfortunately though when the block was finished the residents were assigned flats on a random basis, and so didn't get the one they had designed!
Above is a work I really liked, from the The Immaterial Legacy show. It seems incidental, almost escaping the gallery and squashed into a corner. I enjoyed looking around this show, it seemed relevant to MACBA and so to the city I was in, it was accessible and had some great works in it.
Art & Language Uncompleted looked good (see image above)- but was really dry, too much writing and way too high brow, I just wandered through the rooms and wasn't at all engaged. This was a shame and a huge mistake on the curator's part I think, especially as I glimpsed a couple of lovely, funny works and the last room was great but by that time I was bored and a little disillusioned.
Sagrada Familia
Whenever I have seen images of the Sagrada Famillia it mostly looks disorganised and a mess of carved, bleak stone. However that's not at all what it's like in real life, there is so much colour both inside and out, and the views from the towers are great. It is however a bit of a tourist scrum and moneymaking machine, not even almost a place for contemplation and quiet reflection!
In life the building is lovely, there are coloured mosaics on the outside and the inside is drenched with colour from the stained glass windows. The detail is incredible, everything is designed and decorated to within an inch of it's life, but in a quite beautiful, clean and elegant way.
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