Compositions presents five artistic interventions in unique sites across the neighbourhoods of the city of Barcelona. Each of the commissioned artists is represented by a gallery participating in the second edition of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend.

Curated by Latitudes for the second time (see 2015 edition), the project further explores Barcelona as a rich fabric of the historic and the contemporary, the unfamiliar and the conspicuous. Resisting an overall theme, and instead developing from the artists’ responses to the specificity of each context—people, as well as places—the five art projects form a temporary thread that links evocative locations and public space, running parallel to the Weekend’s exhibitions in galleries and museums. 

In its second edition, Composiciones will present interventions by Lúa Coderch (Club Billar Barcelona); Regina Giménez (Antigua Fábrica de Can Trinxet, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat); Lola Lasurt (Biblioteca Pública Arús); Robert Llimós (connecting all the participating galleries) and Wilfredo Prieto (Unitat Muntada de la Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona). Their projects will offer moments of intermission, intimacy and bewilderment throughout the weekend, highlighting some lesser-known aspects of the city’s cultural heritage and municipal life.

Interior of the Club Billar Barcelona. Photo: Courtesy Club Billar Barcelona.

Zoom in a map here.

Interior of the Biblioteca Pública Arús.

Thursday 29 September, 6pm: 

Free guided visit by Lola Lasurt and Latitudes at the Biblioteca Pública Arús, Passeig de Sant Joan, 26.

Interior of Can Trinxet factory in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Zoom in a map here.

Free guided visit by Regina Giménez and Latitudes at Can Trinxet, c/ Santa Eulàlia 182–212, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Façade of the Unitat Muntada de la Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona in Parc de la Ciutadella.

Location of the Unitat Muntada in the southeastern part of the Parc de la Ciutadella. Zoom in a map here.

Conceived by Wilfredo Prieto as his project for the Composiciones programme, "Pantalones rotos" (Torn Jeans), 2012, is realised by the horses of the Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona. The action-sculpture takes place at the Mounted Unit’s stables, a historic venue next to the city zoo that is not normally open to the public and whose exercise paddock is overlooked by the twin towers of the Torre Mapfre and Hotel Arts. In his work, Prieto makes reference to an image which appears on the tag of every pair of classic Levi’s denim jeans—two horses trying in vain to break a pair of reinforced trousers. Since their invention in 1873, Levi Strauss & Co.’s famous copper-riveted denim has become synonymous with the working people of the western United States—cowboys, lumberjacks, and railroad workers. Yet in "Pantalones rotos", this symbol of the American frontier myth has been already torn apart with bathos as two harnessed horses each drag one half of a torn pair of jeans. – Latitudes  

Saturday 1 October, 12am:
Free guided visit by Latitudes at the Unitat Muntada de la Guàrdia Urbana. Meeting point: c/ Wellington s/n. (Opposite the tram stop Ciutadella–Vil·la Olímpica)

Follow + Share: 
@Barcelona_Gallery_Weekend
#BarcelonaGalleryWeekend
#Composiciones2016
#LosCorredores1972   
@LTTDS 
#LatitudesBarcelona  



The Barcelona Gallery Weekend is an initiative of the de Art Barcelona and is supported by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (ICUB), the Generalitat de Catalunya (ICEC), the Ajuntament de L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), as well as by private sponsors and individual patrons. http://www.barcelonagalleryweekend.com/


Related content:

• Composiciones 2015 commissions;
• 2015 social media archive;
• Instagram of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend;
• PRESS RELEASE: Latitudes curates "Composiciones", a series of five artists' commissions for the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 October 2015; 
• NOTA DE PRENSA: Comisariado de "Composiciones", cinco intervenciones artísticas para el primer Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 Octubre 2015;

As recently announced in this channel, we have re-designed our website. This has meant improving a few tech and editing things and introducing new sections such"cover story": a monthly focus on an artwork, artist, book, site or trip we've experienced in our recent past, accompanied by a short text. 

Our first cover story centers on Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" presented in 2007 in the group show "Extraordinary Rendition". Above you find the full picture, below details. Enjoy!
 

–
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Our website is finally up and running! Take a look at www.lttds.org

After months of re-editing, digging floppy disks and analogue archives, we're proud (and relieved!) to launch our newly designed website, same address as always: http://www.lttds.org





Yes! Each page is more tablet and mobile-friendly, yet has an even wider format for your desktop.



We have revised the 'About' page and placed an accordion listing our "Lectures", "Teaching", "Awards & Affiliations", "Juries", "Residencies", "Bibliography/Press" and "Research and Field Trips".

And last, but certainly not least, we continue to report from our blog on the development of our projects as well as on our field trips, news, shows, or books worth discussing.

Following Latitudes recent trip to Mexico City for our project at Casa del Lago (see a slideshow of the five tours we realised around the city with artists Minerva Cuevas, Tania Pérez Córdova, Jerónimo Hagerman, Diego Berruecos, and Terence Gower), here's a run through of some of the other museum and gallery exhibitions which we had time to see in the city.

LABOR and kurimanzutto both opened on the 20th September. LABOR's solo exhibition of Terence Gower (one of the five artists invited by Latitudes as part of the 'Incidents of Travel' project documented at Casa del Lago). His 'Ottagono' exhibition presented new and old works "that extended the artist investigation into the realm of abstract art" (quote from the press release), including the 2010 video "New Utopias", "Noguchi Galaxy" (2012), the sculpture group "Display Modern (Hepworth)" (2007) as well as paintings on photographs "Latin American Architecture" (2012), amongst others.




The Museo Experimental El Eco also had a book launch that evening, and upstairs the project "FRANCE FICTION: Vinimos a soñar" by Paris-based curator Jennifer Teets could be seen.



kurimanzutto began the 2012-13 season with Untitled 2012, (All those years at No. 17E London Terrace), a collaboration between visual artist Rirkrit Tiravanija and musician Arto Lindsay, for which the artist recreated Lindsay's New York flat and copied around 2000 CDs and books he has had in storage in New York. Lindsay played the following day at Cine Tonalá and hung out in his new plywood mexican home the following week recording music and talking with visitors. Also, in the project space, was Paloma Polo's 'Posición Aparente' (recently exhibited as part of Reina Sofia's Fisuras programme). On view until 3 November. ( gob. Rafael Rebollar 94, Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, 11850 México D.F.) http://www.kurimanzutto.com
 

During installation we escaped for a lunch break and a visit to the recently extended Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in the Bosque de Chapultepec. The Tamayo hosted an impressive roster of exhibitions: two group shows and three solo presentations, besides a selection of Tamayo's work: 'Primer Acto' (a group show on the idea of inauguration and the opening act), 'El mañana ya estuvo aquí' (a group show with works around the idea of retrospective visions of the future of modernity), Ryan Gander's 'Boing, boing, squirt'; Pierre Huyghe's 'El día del ojo' (a three part piece consisting of a permanent sculpture of a fish tank with blind fish and volcanic rocks; a selection of works from the Museo Tamayo y del Museo de Arte Prehispánico "Rufino Tamayo" in Oaxaca; and a publication) and the project 'Nueva Matemática' by Michael Stevenson. 

At MUCA-Roma we visited the group show "Colección: El crimen fundacional, crítica del museo' curated by first graduating students in the Curatorial Programme of UNAM's Art History degree, which included Mariana Castillo Deball's piece 'It rises or falls depending on whether you're coming or going. If you are leaving, it's uphill; but as you arrive it's downhill' (2006), presented in 2007 in the Latitudes'-curated exhibition 'Extraordinary Rendition'. The piece revisits a popular legend around the looting and transportation of the colossal stone statue of Tláloc to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City in a series of lithographs.


Our final stop was Proyectos Monclova, which has relocated to a new and much larger space in Colima 55 (Col. Roma) with a solo show of architect Eduardo Terrazas (best known for his graphic design for Mexico's 1968 olympics realised in collaboration with Lance Wyman and Manuel Villazón.) Terrazas was concurrently exhibiting some works at the Casa Luis Barragán. The final gallery space was screening a fantastic slideshow with the 1968 work "Imagen México" accompanied with a soundtrack of 1969 songs. The exhibition finished on 29 September. See video of the opening here (via Vernissage TV) and a recent newspaper article.





On Saturday 29th there was a tour (Ruta de Galerias, see video by Vernissage TV) around San Miguel Chapultepec and Tacubaya art spaces (participants included: Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, Casa Luis Barragán, Central Art Projects, Galería de Arte Mexicano, Gallé Antigüedades, Jan Mot, kurimanzutto, Labor, Estacionamientos San Miguel Chapultepec, and Fundación Alumnos47). We started the day at the Museo de Arte Moderno, with a launch of the publication "History of the World" and in conversation between L.A.-born Guadalajara-based artist Eduardo Sarabia and Patrick Charpenel, collector and director of the Colección Jumex.



The tour was followed by a quick burger lunch at Café Zena in the corner of Gob. Potasio Pérez de Tagle and Antonio de León. 


...and then back to kurimanzutto, where Arto Lindsay was having a conversation with Carlos Icaza, discussing a selection of his books and CDs, talking about the changes in music technology and supports (from vinyl to CDs), mexican, brazilian and japanese musicians.


From there we visited Jan Mot's space (Gob. José Ceballos 10, Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, 11850 México D.F. www.janmot.com), which presented Manon de Boer's "One, two, many", recently also presented for dOCUMENTA (13) (see Latitudes' comprehensive blog post here). On view at until 17 November.


On our final evening in Mexico City we went to Sala Arte Público Siqueiros, where cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto celebrated the beginning his 45-day project "Dejándole algo a la suerte" (Leaving something to chance, until 12 November). For the duration of the exhibition Prieto occupies the upper gallery of the SAPS which has been turned into a studio from where he develops and conceptualises works to be presented on a daily basis on the lower gallery space (see here for those who have already taken place). On October 4th, the (non) opening day, the project began with 'Dos Tiempos': the encounter of a hare (named Raúl) and a terapin (Anastasia).


All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Charla con la comisaria Direlia Lazo y presentación del catálogo de la exposición 'I'm not here. An exhibition without Francis Alÿs', Miércoles 14 Julio, 19h.

Frieze Foundation has recently announced the 2010 Cartier Winner: Berlin-based British/Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara (1982). The prize is addressed to artists not living in the UK and covers coproduction costs of up to £10,000, a £1,000 artist’s fee, per diems, travel expenses and a studio residency at Gasworks in London from August to October 2010.

According to the press release "at Frieze Art Fair 2010 Fujiwara plans to present a new site-specific work, Frozen: an installation based on the fictive premise that an ancient lost city has been discovered beneath the site of the fair."


Fujiwara presented 'The Museum of Incest' during the 2009 Frieze in the newly inaugurated section FRAME (see Latitudes' post here) with Frankfurt–based gallery Galerie Neue Alte Brücke.

Before then, a version of the museum was presented at the Latitudes-curated exhibition 'Provenances' at Umberto di Marino, Naples, during which 'The Incest Museum: A Guided Tour' was published by Archive Books.





Fujiwara will participate in the forthcoming 29th Bienal de Sao Paulo (25 September–12 December 2010), Manifesta 8 in Murcia (2 October 2010-9 January 2011), Performa, the 2011 edition of the New York performance biennial and a solo exhibition at TATE, St.Ives (2011).

The 2009 Cartier Award winner was Jordan Wolfson (New York, 1980) – see Latitudes' post here and an exhibition review by Max Andrews' from Latitudes here) and the 2008 winner was Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto (1978) (see Latitudes' post here and artist profile here).

The Cartier Award 2008 has been awarded to Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto (b. 1978). The award enables artists to realise a major project as part of Frieze Projects at the Frieze Art Fair, curated by Neville Wakefield, as well as to enjoy a 3-month residency at Gasworks, London, to produce the piece.

According to Frieze Art Fair 2008, "Prieto will present Pond, a site-specific installation of more than 100 oil drums. The mirrored pond-like effect created by water in the lids of the drums will be punctured by the presence and movement of a frog. The work will be a beautiful and poetic reflection on the current international obsession with accumulation and growth."

To know more about Prieto's work, read the profile that appeared in Frieze Magazine (October 2007, Issue 110) and the images of 'Grasa, Jabón y Plátano' (2006) in 'Extraordinary Rendition', the exhibition we curated in NoguerasBlanchard (March 2007).

Following is an excerpt of the artist entry in the 'Greenwashing...' catalogue:

The artist’s most visible contribution to Greenwashing is Estanque (Pond) (2007), a new sculpture in which a congregation of crude oil barrels have seemingly been transformed into an idyllic, ‘eco-friendly’ lily pond habitat with the addition of water puddles and a live frog. Though the oil barrel is not commonly part of our everyday surroundings as a physical object, it has a familiar significance as the standard unit of volume for the production and consumption of petroleum, and as such, it is often cast as a symbol of all of the ills of fossil-fuel dependency. Furthermore, the price of a barrel is a global index of macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical stability, and the fundamentals of energy supply-and-demand. [1] The environment that Prieto has created by converting the petroleum containers is no more ‘natural’ than the oil itself – which is, after all, an organic substance. Yet the sculpture inevitably suggests the prospect of eco-advertising, as if its graphic visual summary of apparent amphibian-petroleum harmony could perfectly lend itself to an audacious company marketing department in a bid to demonstrate their ‘green’ industrial principles. [2] – Max Andrews

1. According to the 2007 CIA World Factbook, in Italy the equivalent of 32.1 barrels of oil are used each day for every 1000 people – or 11.7 barrels per person per year. The figure for the US is roughly double this estimate, and for Cuba, roughly half.
2. The connection to a recent Ford Motor Company campaign is irresistible: the well-known character Kermit the Frog appears pedalling on a bicycle singing his 1970 song ‘Bein’ Green’, before he spots a Ford Escape Hybrid in a verdant wood, ‘I guess it is easy being green’, Kermit declares. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKotANcNVyo

[Image: Wilfredo Prieto 'Estanque (Pond)', 2008. Oil barrels, water, frog. Courtesy the artist and Galería NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona. Photo: Courtesy Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino]