Exhibition. Albert Serra. Personalien

Albert Serra. Personalien. Film, 2019

The Museo Reina Sofía presents an exhibition by film-maker Albert Serra (Banyoles, Gerona, 1975), featuring his latest audiovisual work and framed inside the Fissures programme, set up to support contemporary artistic production.

Defined by critics as an unflinching artist who remains at a distance from the conventional circles of the genre, Serra has shown his work at major international festivals such as Cannes (2006 and 2008), Toronto (2016) and Locarno (2013), where his film Historia de la meva mort (The Story of My Death, 2013), set in the transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the literary figures of Casanova and Dracula, was voted Best Film. Serra also frequently works with museums, both in Spain and internationally; in 2010, in conjunction with the exhibition ¿Estáis listos para la televisión? (Are You Ready for TV?) held in MACBA, he presented a 14-episode series entitled Els noms de Crist (The Names of Christ, 2010), filmed in the museum’s galleries and based on the work The Names of Christ by Fray Luis de León (1586). A year later he made El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles(The Lord Worked Wonders in Me) for the show The Complete Letters. Filmed Correspondence, in Barcelona’s CCCB, whereby Serra and his crew travelled to La Mancha in search of the landscapes in Quixote’s life that could be used for a film.

Dates: From 25 February to 13 May, 2019
Location: Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
Programme: Fissures

Workshop. Living as Shelter. Three readings of H. C. Westermann

H.C. Westermann. The Bronze Man, 1977. Mixed Technique, 54 × 62 × 31 cm. The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago; The H. C. Westermann Study Collection, donation of Dennis Adrian in memory of the artist

This research workshop is based on the exhibition H. C. Westermann. Goin’ Home, conceived as a kaleidoscope to shed light on a maverick account of post-war American art. Regarded as an artists’ artist, Westermann married the critical commitment of sculptors and painters schooled in Chicago — he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago himself on two occasions — with the iconoclastic visions of East Coast Funk Art sculptures. In Westermann there is the concurrence of physical object art, reminiscent of Pop’s most countercultural side, and the representation of an irrational America with a biting sense of humour; yet, despite his relationship with different movements, Westermann’s sculptures and drawings are fiercely unique and characterised by reflections on living, the construction of anti-monuments and a scrutiny of death.

The workshop comprises three sessions, the first conducted by the exhibition’s curator Beatriz Velázquez, the second by artist Carlos Fernández-Pello, and the third by art historian Patricia Mayayo, each of whom will pose questions that evoke the work of H. C. Westermann through the specific nature of their own disciplines.

These sessions are pitched at anyone interested in art as a process of knowledge from multiple perspectives: writing, artistic practice, curatorship, education and thought.

Dates: 7, 14, 15 and 22 March, 2019
Hour: 10am (check programme)
Location: Nouvel Building, Study Centre
Aforo: 25 people
Admission: free, with prior registration by filling out this form
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
Educational program sponsored by: Banco Santander Foundation

RRS. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Raciality and social struggles in the United States

Keeanga-Yamahtta Tayloris an activist and theorist on Black freedom struggles and a lecturer in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She has published articles on social movements, urban politics and racial inequality in the USA, and is the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2016), which brings historical perspective to the present and indicates future struggles for Black liberation. In 2017 she published a new collection of essays entitled How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective.