Typewriting

Yesterday I went to the Contemporary art Museum in Barcelona, MACBA. There were two exhibitions on there, Rodney Graham and John Baldessari. All images are Rodney Graham, whose exhibition was really good, I found the John Baldessari exhibition to be kind of trite and uninteresting. Rodney Graham's exhibition "Through the forest" incorporated photography, sculpture and video. I felt like this was the first time I have seen video art that I really loved. This was due to the fact that his videos came across almost like paintings or photographs. They were all very aesthetically beautiful, and there also seemed to be no real feeling of plot or purpose to them. A large amount of repetition, which allows the viewer to look at them satisfactorily for the same amount of time they might look at a painting, and not feel compelled to keep watching and watching. However due to the repetitive nature of the videos and the simplicity of the imagery, they were quite mesmerising, and I found that I preferred to keep viewing them for a much longer period of time than is usual for me with video art.

Sadly I didn't take my camera as my favourite piece in the exhibition was a still life photograph of browned dead flowers in a vase surrounded by blue tinged painting supplies. It is rare that still life works so well without becoming hackneyed. I can't find any pictures of it though and I searched for hours, it was that good. I also went to the Picasso museum while in Barcelona, I didn't find it particularly exciting as I have already seen a lot of Picasso elsewhere, and it seemed like this museum missed out on most of his masterpieces but it was still interesting. However I especially wanted to go after viewing the Rodney Graham exhibition at MACBA, as he also had works on display at the Picasso museum. These works were all playing with the idea of abstraction as seen in an old magazine cartoon about one of Picasso's abstract paintings. I didn't enjoy these works as much as the other exhibition, however they were interesting as they were all dealing with the same theme, using shapes cut out of painted wood attached to a flat plain coloured background. The works were grouped in four different colour pairings on each side of the room, and it was interesting after viewing the Picasso collection, as Picasso often worked on variations of the same painting and theme in multiple paintings. I have also felt like I want to wok in a more 3D way with cut out wood etc after viewing previous exhibitions that highlight this, and this was another interesting take on that format. However quite flat as each work only used two shades of one colour.

Typewriter from MACBA, the gifted amateur here