Private Property
Antoni Abad
from April 10, 2019 to June 1, 2019
“… in Madrid we have not had many opportunities to see Antoni Abad's work. The most recent exhibition presented in a public space was in 2014 at Matadero (with megafone.net/2004-2014). The last time his work was seen in a private gallery goes as far back as 2002 (when he showed The Last Super at Oliva Arauna). Nevertheless, we have seen some of his pieces included in group exhibitions from time to time. Therefore, this exhibition can be considered a noteworthy occasion, above all because this is an artist who since the 80s has had a solid presence in the national artistic panorama (with important and regular exhibitions abroad). He has participated in recognized international events and, to give a few examples, one must highlight the fact that he was the only representative of the Catalan Pavilion at the most recent Venice Biennale, as well as mention his participation in the collective exhibition The Real Royal Trip, curated by Harald Szeemann at P.S.1 in New York in 2003 and at the Berlin Biennale in 2016. In virtue of his limited presence in Madrid, it seems relevant to share this information to emphasize the place that this artist of complex visual representation holds in the national artistic panorama.
Private Property is the title that the artist has fittingly used for this show that brings together four works. One of the works on the show, with the same title of the exhibition, features a mosaic or mural of photographs of padlocks fastened to the doors of stores and workshops. The other three works in the exhibition are: The Seventh Heaven, a series of photographs of railings and trellises that the artist has contemplated (or has been able to see) along the rooftops and eaves in Barcelona, the city where he resides; The Kiss sculpture of two gigantic flies that kiss in a complicit embrace as if they were a couple of powerful plutocrats; and finally, Money Honey *Euro, a projection in which, using a computer programme, the spectator contemplates how a hard-working colony of cockroaches draw the euro symbol with their bodies. Through this prosaic and concise description of the exhibited works, which are ironically scientific and voluntarily philological, it will be possible to verify the efficacy and success of their creator by uniting them under the common statement of Private Property.”[1]
[1] Fragment of the essay by the art critic Luis Francisco Pérez for the catalogue of the Private Property, exhibition at Galería Freijo.