Inauguración de la
Within the framework of cultural policies at the local level, and more specifically in the sphere of the visual arts, a conflict often arises between cultural formations that are the result of long and complex historical processes:
There are municipalities, such as El Prat de Llobregat, where, through public institutions, a firm commitment is made to programs for the dissemination of emerging contemporary art.
The conflict arises when citizens of these municipalities who develop an amateur artistic practice question these programs because they do not share or understand the reasons why value is given to some artistic manifestations called ‘contemporary’ and not to theirs. These are relatively eclectic practices but with well-defined features and references that are widespread in certain social environments: realistic painting -with a predominance of a landscape tradition that finds its references in different schools, filtered through a certain type of industrially produced decorative painting-, the copying of the masters of Western painting -but exclusively those with a wide media impact-, the images that circulate reproduced in calendars and various posters, the painting exhibited in decoration stores, exhibition halls of commercial galleries (such as ” El Corte Inglés“), etc., or in a parallel circuit of galleries, publications and contests that reproduce the clichés of the artistic field of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, at the very moment when the figure of the modern artist and his institutions appear.
Precisely that, the moment in which the painter of modern life is born, represents a turning point in the process of segregation of cultural practices from social life; being very schematic, we can say that it is the moment in which modern states clearly patrimonialize and officialize those cultural manifestations that are declared autonomous (those of the avant-garde artists), while expropriating popular culture from its social environment, turning it into a folkloric expression.
The art center
Torre Muntadas
organizes annually, for 36 years, a massive group exhibition of artists from El Prat. The exhibition is, by far, the event with the most public of all the center’s programming during the year, and it is also the moment when tensions and criticisms arise regarding its exhibition line.
From the direction of the center they have decided to “take the bull by the horns” and organize a meeting of the artists participating in the exhibition with Patricia Campos (director of
StripArt
) and Mariló Fernández («Artist, educator and cultural activist» and at the time member of LaFundició) to talk about all this. Mariló will show our collaboration with the group of painters CandeL’Hart, and especially their participation in initiatives such as
Aula a la deriva
or the project
Prototips en codi obert
by Oriol Fontdevila and the
Fundació Antoni Tàpies
, as well as their daily creative practice and how they intend to integrate it into the social and cultural life of the neighborhood of Bellvitge (L’Hospitalet) of which they are neighbors.
If you feel like coming, it will be on Saturday, July 14 at Torre Muntadas at 11 in the morning.