Antoni Muntadas: Videos 1971-1996

Since he stopped painting in the early 1970s, Antoni Muntadas’ career has consisted of studying, researching and examining the corpus of the mass media, or the media landscape, with a clinical eye. He cuts, dissects, and fragments the flow of television, film and video images (applying a specific treatment to each one), to reinsert the same images in such a way that new and often contradictory meaning is given to the initial message. This message/countermessage structure can be found in his works and installations, where the artistic context and montage determine the discourse. Muntadas’ work takes a deep look at different problems in society today from the private to the public sphere: industry and the media (and its tentacles) appear in his first video works; the socio-political network of the art world is analysed in his ambitious project Between the Frames (1994); the political context appears more specifically in Political Advertisements and in his installations The Board Room (1987), Stadium (1989-1993) and The File Room (1994); architecture and the urban scene take a leading role in his video Marseille: Mythes et Stéreotypes and his pieces Media Site /Media Monuments (1982), City Museum (1991-1994) and The Limousine Project (1991-1992).

In short, Muntadas’ works in this cycle make it clear that the media as a whole, according to its context and intentions, can serve as a pretext for art.