Marcel Pié Barba.

Weekly Selections

Global Kiosk at the Sala d’Art Jove

Barcelona, Spain / Curator Patricia Ciriani received a grant to develop Global Kiosk at one of Barcelona’s least glamorous exhibition spaces, the awkwardly named Young Art Gallery, run by the regional government. Ciriani has invited four creators (three artists—Miquel García, Marcel Pié Barba, Toni Crabb—and an experimental musician, Christopher Williams) to rotate projects between the exhibition space and a lightweight structure set at its threshold, pushing onto the street. Performances and public debates are held inside, while features of each artist’s project more appropriate for display have found their way “outside.”

Ciriani’s Global Kiosk has its wider reference in the flexible contraptions concocted in the service of early Soviet propaganda, as well as contemporary use of ephemeral architecture in public art. Yet it also revives a specific yet dying feature of Barcelona street-level commerce: the pint-size countertop shops stuck along the sides of residential block entranceways. All of the artists take on aspects of the communicative role of the structure itself. With Domestic Archaeology, Pié Barba turned the kiosk into a support for filmed documents of his personal life, recalling constructions contrived for the carnivalesque presentation of 19th century pre-cinema. For his part, Miquel Garcia has worked with the immediate neighbourhood, formerly the site of a slaughterhouse, in creating a documentary archive of its forgotten past. For the show in late March, Crabb will treat the kiosk as an interface between hard-edged urban flow and subtler animal life, turning it into a habitat for snails. The project is inspired by the ideas of ecological pioneer Jakob von Uexküll. Finally, Williams, with his Space Interrupted by the Score, weaves a new musical and graphic composition inspired by radical art-nun Corita Kent into the multiple spaces of the gallery, performing in situ as well as having recordings of the piece played throughout the exhibition’s time and place.

Global Kiosk runs 4 February-April 3, 2009 at the Sala d’Art Jove, Barcelona.

About this Preview

First published in March 03, 2009 by Jeffrey Swartz.

Jeffrey Swartz is an art critic and curator based in Barcelona since 1987. Recent curatorial projects include When Far Ends Meet, a series of five exhibitions at the Sala H, Vic, Spain, in 2006, and 419, or The Spanish Prisoner, a touring show about the 419 e-mail scam that will be seen in spring 2008 at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona. Swartz teaches Theoretical Foundations of Art and Design at the Escola Eina, Barcelona.

notes

image: Marcel Pié Barba. Courtesy of Sala d'Art Jove, Barcelona

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Weekly Selection Archives

  1. Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A. at the Hammer Museum  Los Angeles, California
  2. Global Kiosk at the Sala d’Art Jove  Barcelona, Spain
  3. Fallow at the Charles H. Scott Gallery  Vancouver, Canada
  4. Doings or Not at Hobusepea Gallery  Tallinn, Estonia
  5. John Bock at REDCAT  Los Angeles, California
  6. Ann-Sofi Sidén at Bonniers Konsthall  Stockholm, Sweden
  7. Kori Newkirk at Laxart  Culver City, California