MACBA Collection

The current presentation of the MACBA Collection is set up chronologically so that the public can better understand the historical period that explores the post-modern condition. We begin in the 40s and 50s when the idea of Utopia was coming to a close. From that, art went from being an object to being a definite form of institutional criticism. In that sense, the precursory work of Marcel Broodthaers is fundamental, for it meant the recognition of a discursive nature and, as a consequence, the possibility that elements not necessarily artistic but discursive, social and political become a place of intervention. In that same way, feminism's legacy, cultural studies, the predominance of mass media, as well as interest in collective spaces and in investigating how media shapes the individual's experience of them, are all aspects of the exhibition which features the works of Jo Spence, Eugènia Balcells, Dieter Roth and Dan Graham. Photography's eruption in the 80s as the emblematic media for theories of representational criticism and the compromise between contemporaneity and activist and political thought make up the final leg of this exhibition.

Nowadays is on show a selection of works belonging to the MACBA Collection presentation 2006.