Exhibition. Luigi Ghirri. The Map and the Territory

Luigi Ghirri, Paris, 1972. Color photography. 18,5 x 28,5 cm. Private collection, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri

The Map and the Territory is the first major Luigi Ghirri retrospective to go on show outside the artist’s native Italy. The focus of the exhibition rests on the 1970s, a key period in the expansion of the suburbs and the service economy, the emergence of conceptual art and the mainstreaming of Pop and its strategies of appropriation.

This exhibition is structured around two key notions: “territory” and “map”, ideas which reflect the world and the way it is represented. The selection of works here reprises the poetic cartography of the 1979 show, which, across fourteen series divided into themes, surveyed a compendium of the places Ghirri travelled through: houses in the suburbs; the landscape of signs in the provincial Italy of that era; the relationship between artificiality and nature in the gardens of Modena; modern advertising images; the simulated of world of amusement parks; those who photograph and those who are photographed; details of maps taken from an atlas, and so on. 

Dates: From 26 September, 2018 to 7 January, 2019
Location: Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
Curatorship: James Lingwood
In collaboration with: Folkwang Museum (Essen) and Jeu de Paume (Paris)
With the support of: Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Madrid

James Lingwood. Encounter on Luigi Ghirri

James Lingwood, curator of this exhibition, will lead a guided visit to the exhibit just before the opening with the aim of introducing the main ideas supporting Ghirri’s artistic practice. Ghirri is a key author for understanding postmodern photography and some of its fundamental theses, such as the blurring of reality with fiction and the extreme codification of representation in today’s world.

Dates: Tuesday, 25 September 2018
Hour: 7pm
Location: Sabatini Building. Floor 3. Exhibition rooms
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
In collaboration with: illycaffè
Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation

Exhibition. Dorothea Tanning. Behind the Door, Another Invisible Door

Dotothea Tanning, Birthday, 1942, Oil on canvas, Philadephia Museum of Art © VEGAP, Madrid, 2018

This exhibition collects Tanning's extensive, exhaustive and expressive body of work between the USA and France, producing paintings, drawings, costume and set designs for ballets, “soft” sculptures, novels and poems. Her work tells stories which are etched into a personal universe she used to give meaning to modern life and, in a surreal setting — brimming with fantasy and phantoms — shaped in a space which is at once seductive and pernicious.

The exhibition revolves around themed rooms drifting through the periods which were integral to Tanning’s career — spanning childhood and family scenes, girls dressed in Victorian clothing, baroque and bucolic nudes, red-rock deserts, and representations of flowers, highly pertinent in her mature work. Moreover, her installations include Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot [Poppy Hotel, Room 202] (1970–1973), with amorphous sculptures inviting visitors to see, feel and be part of the surreal world she inhabits.

Dates: From 3 October 2018 to 7 January 2019
Location: Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
Curatorship: Alyce Mahon
In collaboration with: Comunidad de Madrid
With the support of: The Destina Foundation and Fundación Museo Reina Sofía

Alyce Mahon. Encounter with Dorothea Tanning

Before the opening, Alyce Mahon, curator of the exhibition, will conduct a pre-opening guided tour of this retrospective, which explores the seventy-year-long career of the American artist. This encounter with the curator is conceived as a survey which allows visitors to become immersed in the surrealist universe of hallucinations and phantoms as they walk through the exhibition.

Dates: Tuesday, 2 October 2018
Hour: 7pm
Location: Sabatini Building. Floor 3. Exhibition rooms
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
In collaboration with: illycaffè
Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation
Admission: Free, with prior registration via email at programasculturales3@museoreinasofia.es (places limited)

Film Series. Wang Bing. Dispossessed Lives. Resilient Lives

Wang Bing. Ta´ang. Film, 2016

Film-maker Wang Bing portrays people who have been excluded in China’s recent economic transformation with rare beauty and uncompromising severity, focusing on those who have been disowned by the system and experience untold cruelty on a daily basis, people who cling to life as an extreme act of resistance and dignity. Wang Bing puts forward a profound consideration of history, the paradoxes of industrial ruin and the suffering caused by the inexorable ‘progress’ in modern China in his work, taking the cinema verité ideal of observing reality to the extreme to reach a new and profound radicalism.

In the first comprehensive retrospective on one of today’s pivotal directors, the Museo Reina Sofía and Filmoteca Española will screen the entirety of Wang Bing’s films and film installations, scarcely exhibited or shown due to their extreme running times. Moreover, the series features the film-maker’s first lecture in Spain, along with two premieres on Spanish soil and another international premiere.    

Dates: From 4 October to 17 November, 2018
Hour: (check programme)
Location: Sabatini Building, Auditorium and Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré
Curatorship: Chema González, Museo Reina Sofía, and Carlos Reviriego, Filmoteca Española
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía and Filmoteca Española
Admission:
Museo Reina Sofía sessions: Free entry
Filmoteca Española sessions: €3.00