ENTHUSIASM. Challenge and Obstinacy in the MACBA Collection

Following these premises, Enthusiasm. Challenge and Obstinacy in the MACBA Collection puts forward five possible approaches based on the enthusiastic act: the cosmogonic construction, the creative power of daily life, the performative charge of the body, social activism and the crisis of the very notion of art. In other words, the determination of artists such as Zush, Anne-Lise Coste and Younès Rahmoun to build a world of their own through experiences, fantasies and beliefs; the repetition of simple and everyday gestures by Esther Ferrer, Ignasi Aballí, Dieter Roth, Richard Hamilton and Tere Recarens; the performativity of Vito Acconci and Àngels Ribé; the non-conformist actions of Maja Bajevic, Emanuel Licha, Mireia Sallarès, Cildo Meireles and Gordon Matta-Clark; and, finally, the critique of the art system by artists such as Marcel Broodthaers and Peter Friedl, suggest a narrative sequence in which enthusiasm denotes a strong ideological position before the artistic fact: one that, in the end, conceives art as an act of faith capable of achieving its aim, whether it is changing the world or simply questioning oneself.

Enthusiasm builds on the conceptual legacy of two projects based on this concept and which took place in Barcelona in the mid-2000s. On the one hand, the project Faith and Enthusiasm (2004), by the artist Antonio Ortega: a processual exhibition organised at Espai 13 of the Fundació Joan Miró, which, focusing on the notion of success, attempted to raise funds to build a waxwork figure of Yola Berrocal, the best example of enthusiasm according to the artist. On the other hand, the exhibition Enthusiasm presented at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in 2005: an archive of films linked to the Polish amateur film movement between 1950 and 1980 compiled by artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska. Both projects incorporated a liberating impulse arising from passion. And it is here, in the challenge that is more visceral than rational, more passionate than strategic, that the intensity of this survey of the MACBA Collection lies. Despite having very different objectives, and doing so through disparate forms of presentation, all the artists in the exhibition share the same gesture: to express themselves forcefully.

Under the effect of contagion and complicity, the three concepts behind the exhibition – enthusiasm, challenge and obstinacy – also apply to all the agents and structures that intervene in the project: the curatorial position, the configuration of the MACBA Collection, the desire of the Visual Arts Programme of the Diputació de Barcelona to disseminate and, best of all, the interrelation with the individuals and groups that will visit the exhibition.

You can consult the program here.

Here you will find more information on the exhibition programme

Curator: David Armengol