Exhibition. Hito Steyerl. Duty-Free Art

Exhibition views. Hito Steyerl. Duty-Free Art, 2015

In the work of visual artist Hito Steyerl (Munich, 1966) constructed texts and edited images enlarge the conditions of film essays, reflecting on and intervening in the systems that circulate information, and in those that present and represent the artwork. Her texts, lectures, films and audiovisual installations merge the philosophical and political reflection of critical activism inserted in the world of production and the circulation of the image and the word. Through this perspective the artist develops a critical body of work on modes of perception, control, surveillance, in addition to militarisation, migration, feminism and the political image – questions she feels have the capacity to create realities.

This retrospective brings together 13 of Steyerl’s audiovisual pieces - many of which will be displayed in Spain for the first time - ranging from November (2004) to The Tower (2015), a previously unexhibited work created especially for this exhibition.

Date: November 11, 2015 - March 21, 2016
Location: Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Curatorship: João Fernandes
Organized by: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Exhibition. Andrzej Wróblewski. Recto / Verso

Andrzej Wróblewski, Szofer (Szofer niebieski) [Chauffeur (Blue Chauffeur)], 1948, Private collection, Warszaw © Courtesy Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation

Despite his short life, and his prolonged obscurity to the general public, Polish artist Andrzej Wróblewski (1927–1957) is responsible for a highly relevant body of work within a 20^th-century art context. This exhibition, the first retrospective held outside his country, enables his work to be contemplated in a way that goes beyond the reductionist clichés of socialist realism or Outsider Art, through which art from countries in the Soviet sphere of influence has been studied until recently. Wróblewski worked on the borders between abstraction and figuration, combining formal invention with an analysis of daily life and its limits – the degradation of war and dictatorial politics – by means of a profound human and political commitment.

The exhibition focuses on the artist’s double-sided works (painted on both sides: recto and verso), in two different periods in his oeuvre: its beginnings at the end of the 1940s (1948–1949) as he searched for his own painterly language, and at the very end (1956–1957), when, disillusioned with the politics of real socialism, he attempted to redefine his work, both formally and thematically.

Date: November 17, 2015 - February 28, 2016
Location: Palacio de Velázquez. Parque del Retiro
Curatorship: Éric de Chassey and Marta Dziewańska
Organized by: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
In collaboration with: The Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation and Culture.pl

Related activity. Encounter with Éric de Chassey and Marta Dziewańska

The exhibition’s curators Éric de Chassey and Marta Dziewańska present the work and historical context of Andrzej Wróblewski, a painter who, of the artists searching for answers to the traumas of war and its aftermath, probably embodies the clearest reflection of the necessary surrender to the world’s ambiguity, of the confusion that characterised a time of reconstruction and the search for a way out from what Auschwitz left behind.

Date: November 18, 2015
Location: Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Hour: 7:00 p.m.
Admission: Free, until full capacity is reached
Programme: Check website
Organized by: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Film and video. Avid Eyes. Masterworks from American Avant-garde Experimental Film (1920–1970)

Maya Deren. Meshes of the Afternoon. Film, 1943. Courtesy of Filmmakers Showcase

An anthology of experimental American cinema curated by researcher Bruce Posner, introducing avant-garde cinema as the construction of another vision. A selection of 37 films, remastered for this series, traces the multiple pathways sketched by experimental film over five decades: from the incursions of artists such as Fernand Léger and Marcel Duchamp in the 1920s, to the visual sound experiments of Oskar Fischinger and Mary Ellen Bute, via the documentary viewpoints of Paul Strand, Helen Levitt and Tom Palazzolo, and the unique poetics of film-makers like James Broughton, Bruce Baillie, Marie Menken and Maya Deren.

Date: November 12 - December 18, 2015
Location: Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Hour: 7:00 p.m.
Admission: Free, until full capacity is reached
Programme: Check website
Organized by: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Seminar. Independent Theatre in Spain: 1962–1980

Fabià Puigserver, drawing for the “Llibertat d’expressió” campaign, 1977 Centre de Documentació i Museu de les Arts Escèniques (MAE) del Institut del Teatre

This seminar sets out to present a global vision of theatre staging from the period spanning 1962-1980, one of the most relevant in the history of 20^th-century theatre in Spain. Preceded by the considerable impetus of university theatre in the late fifties and early sixties, this daring independent theatre embraced contemporary performance styles and reached new audiences.  Touring and the exhibition of works in non-theatre spaces, as well as explorations into the possibilities of collective creation and the exposure of ideas in other artistic languages and traditions, would become the distinguishing features of formations that, along with a wholesale rejection of the Franco regime, opposed the poetics and ideology of run-of-the-mill, anachronistic commercial theatre in a society that demanded sweeping changes to structures and relations.

Date: November 19 - 27, 2015
Location: Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200 and Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Admission: Free, until full capacity is reached
Programme: Check website
Organized by: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Centro de Documentación Teatral (INAEM), Institut del Teatre and Centro de Documentación de las Artes Escénicas de Andalucía