ABSTRACTION AND MOTION
Date: July 12 - November 11 2012
Exhibition Session: Post-Painterly Abstraction

Pic Adrián · José Luis Alexanco · Elena Asins · Manuel Barbadillo · José María Bermejo · Ross Bleckner · Boyle Family · Juan Carlos Bracho · Patricio Cabrera · Gerardo Delgado · Equipo 57 · Luis Gordillo · José Guerrero · Joan Hernández Pijuan · Anthony McCall · Gustav Metzger · Henri Michaux · Manolo Millares · François Morellet · Robert Motherwell · Museum of American Art · Daniel Palacios · César Paternosto · Paz Pérez Ramos · Stephen Prina · Manolo Quejido · Soledad Sevilla · José Ramón Sierra · Juan Suárez · Wolfgang Tillmans · Ignacio Tovar · USCO · Juan Uslé · José Val del Omar · José María Yturralde · Simón Zabell

The thesis from which we proceed is a simple one and may be summed up thus: in the visual arts of the twentieth century there were two great artistic achievements, achievements that involved a revolution not unlike the one perspective implied in the Renaissance. The first, recognized in the historiography of art, is abstraction. The second is movement, which has only more recently been prized, via expanded cinema, experimental film and video, but also through seriality, installation work, optical painting, animation and other new media.

This wide-ranging exhibition attempts to conjugate these two major achievements and to study a characteristic phenomenon, abstraction and movement, which has had three historical moments of strength: the 1920s and 30s; the 60s and 70s; and the present day (more or less the last ten years), the latter two periods being the ones that are addressed here.

To do this we follow in the wake of at least four previous exhibitions that, from different angles and using different approaches, have broached the phenomenon under consideration: Sons et lumières (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004-2005), Visual Music (Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, and MoCA, Los Angeles, 2005), Summer of Love (Tate Liverpool, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and Kunsthalle Wien, 2005-2006) and Light Art from Artificial Light (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2006).

The exhibition project itself is divided into two shows, which are superimposed one on top of the other. Firstly, the CAAC collection in terms of its axis to do with pictorial abstraction and beyond. Secondly, a temporary exhibition centering on abstraction in movement. The two share the same space, alternating and interrelating with each other, and on other occasions by setting up oppositions. These are two exhibitions, brought together in a single conceptual and spatial design.

 

ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION

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