Artists: Àngels Ribé, Eduard Escoffet, Dara Birnbaum And Dan Graham, Runa Islam, Rosemarie Trockel, Andreas Gursky, Iman Issa, The Otolith Group, Georg Baselitz, June Crespo, Pedro Barateiro
Exhibition title: In Free Fall
Curated by: João Laia
Venue: CaixaForum, Barcelona, Spain
Date: October 9, 2019 – February 9, 2020
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and CaixaForum, Barcelona
“The image of falling has always made a deep impression on western culture. It comes from some remote theological origin, but is also linked to a primeval desire to escape from the gravitational forces that cause all bodies to fall to earth. The fall then was just a moment, dramatic but fleeting, of ascension or elevation. In modern times the image of falling has undergone a considerable change […] ever more important to understand as a culture of the ‘non-material’ or the ‘intangible’ increasingly takes over.”
—José A. De Bragança
“Many contemporary philosophers have pointed out that the present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.”
—Hito Steyerl
“HERE is no more. Everything is NOW.”
—Paul Virilio
IN FREE FALL employs falling as a metaphor for the generalised perception of abyss resulting from the progressive dissolution of the images, objects and narratives which used to operate as social grounding devices. The project focuses on works created since 1969 to today, adopting the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and the consequent dematerialisation of economy as decisive markers of the contemporary period. Investigating the once stable outlines of reality, the exhibition materialises a broad constellation which integrates different temporal, geographical and symbolic contexts into a single narrative and analyses the ongoing transformations in the areas of ecology, economy, geography, identity, politics, representation and science.IN FREE FALL handles art as a forum in which different forms of interaction with the world may be proposed. In this sense, while demonstrating art’s belonging to a constantly evolving social field, it offers a productive immersion in the now.
