Collectable

I can’t imagine an object without skin

MACBA acquires more works by Ramon Guillen-Balmes

work
Ramon Guillen-Balmes

Arqueologia d'artista (objets trouvés)

Ramon Guillen-Balmes is one of the artists represented in the MACBA Collection, with significant works such as his well-known Arqueologies d’artista (Artist’s Archaeologies), which have been featured in several MACBA exhibitions. This singular installation has recently been enriched by the generous and wide-ranging donation from Galeria Estrany-de la Mota, Barcelona. We now have fifteen new works that highlight his artistic career as a whole. Some date from 1979 and are truly early pieces, while most belong to the 1980s and 1990s. The series Arqueologies d’artista and Objets trouvés are thus expanded, alongside notable additions such as several Models d’ús (Models for Use), as well as intriguing projects like the sgraffito for a building façade, a tribute to Ignasi Aballí, and the Structures for a Soft Idea. Objects, installations, drawings, assemblages, and collages together offer a broad panorama of an artist of great sensitivity, who often worked with noble materials such as felt and wood—a legacy of his early years as a model maker—and with clearly organic forms. As he himself wrote in one of his notebooks in November 1997: “I can’t imagine an object without skin.”