Whenever I’m out and about in my own city or elsewhere, I always find myself checking local art listings to see what’s currently on. I decided to begin sharing my findings with my readers, starting today, with this list of what I think are the ten best art exhibitions now running in Madrid. The list will grow and be updated in the coming months, as the listed exhibitions end and new interesting ones start. Other exhibitions which are not on this list but which appear elsewhere on this site are also definitely worthy of mention, such as Genesis According to Sebastião Salgado at the CaixaForum.
Rubens. El triunfo de la Eucaristía (The Triumph of the Eucharist). From March 25 to June 29, 2014.
This exhibition consists of a set of drawings which the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, governess of the then-Spanish-owned Netherlands, commissioned to Rubens in 1625 for the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (Convent of the Descalzas Reales) in Madrid, together with the panels used for their execution. The Museo del Prado owns six of these panels, which have been painstakingly restored. The main theme here is The Triumph of the Eucharist, a Catholic dogma supported by the Infanta.
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Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Cézanne. Site/non site. From February 4 to May 18, 2014.
This exhibition looks at Cézanne’s work through the relationship between his still lives and his landscapes — the two themes are equally important across Cézanne’s body of work, weaving their way harmoniously in and out of each other.
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El tiempo y las cosas. La casa-estudio de Hanne Darboven (Time and Things. The Home Studio of Hanne Darboven). From March 26 to September 1, 2014.
Hanne Darboven’s (Munich, 1941 — Hamburg, 2009) home studio is crucial to understanding her life and her work. She is known for her large-scale works that combine geometric drawings, numerical series, images and writings, and her work often fluctuates between the conceptual and the subjective, although the dominant themes are mathematics and time. The exhibition also contains a number of objects that Darboven has collected throughout her life and which help us understand the person that she was.
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Josef Albers: medios mínimos, efecto máximo (Minimal Means, Maximum Effect). From March 28 to July 6, 2014.
This exhibition consists of a retrospective of German artist Josef Albers’ (1888 — 1976) work throughout his artistic and educational careers, and its focus is on the artist’s desire to achieve a more spiritual, poetic form of art, as well as maximising its effect on the viewers, through experimentation with colour, working with his hands and minimum resources.
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Olafur Eliasson. Your successful uncertainty. From February 21 to April 16, 2014.
This exhibition spans a range of disciplines — photography, sculpture, drawings and video — that the artist Olafur Eliasson (born in Copenhaguen in 1967) employs in order to explore the different channels of human perception. The public is invited to interact directly with the work on display.
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Lois Patiño. Eco de la imagen (Echo of the Image). From April 4 to May 31, 2014.
Lois Patiño (born in Vigo in 1983) is best known for his documentary Costa da Morte, which won a number of local and international awards. This exhibition contains a selection of his videos and video-installations with photographs, leading to a reflection on the act of contemplation from the viewpoint of the instant-duration dialectic.
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Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Splendide Hotel. From March 13 to August 31, 2014.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (born in Strasbourg in 1965) invites us to take part in a recreation of a guest-room at the Splendide Hotel — visitors can become part of the artwork by sitting in one of the rocking-chairs and getting lost in one of the many books available, specifically chosen for the installation. A real journey through time and space to an imaginary world.
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Museo Arqueológico Nacional
Official Opening April 1, 2014.
This event marks the opening of the new halls at Madrid’s Museo Arqueológico Nacional (National Archeological Museum) after six years of construction work. Visitors can expect a variety of new and exciting activities.
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Manolo Valdés: Obra gráfica (Graphic Work). From March 27 to May 3, 2014.
Legado Lucio Muñoz: Grandes papeles (Large Sheets). From March 27 to May 3, 2014.
Los Carpinteros. Bazar. From February 18 to May 3, 2014.
Marco Castillo (born in Camagüey, Cuba in 1971) and Dagoberto Rodríguez (Caibarién, Las Villas, Cuba, 1969) together form the art duo Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters). The current exhibition — their second one with Ivorypress — consists of a collection of video works which express the ideological, aesthetic and social perspectives of the artists.
