ca2m@madrid.org

The Ha-ha is a deceptive mechanism that plays a role in the construction of the landscape. It generates an illusion of breadth and camouflages its real purpose: to control the movements of certain individuals or species. The name ‘ha-ha’ was used for the first time in the 1709 Dezallier d’Argenville book The Theory and Practice of Gardening, in which he explained that the name came from the exclamation of surprise from spectators when they recognised the optical illusion.

When I was asked to lead this tour, the first thing that came to mind was the title: Ha-ha Wall. It was almost an immediate association, perhaps induced by the huge contrast between this term and the immense work that presides over this show: 1,502 people facing the wall. It’s a laughable wall that is not remotely funny. It is a starting point, given that my and Santiago’s work have little in common at first glance. I have used the word ‘ha-ha’, which is a joke in itself, as a way of breaking the ice and beginning an unlikely dialogue between two generations, between two very different ways of approaching artistic production. Contrast again. And the contrast between light and shadow is what allows us to see… although not always. Shadows conceal or reveal, and looking directly at light can blind us. I want to approach this tour positioned from the paradoxes of looking, from the devices of visibility and concealment used to present facts, from the constant suspicion that in everything we are given to see, something remains hidden.

The CA2M Museum’s Education and Public Activities Department has a line of work aimed at developing thematic tours in which artists and creators are invited to discuss the exhibitions with spectators through the lens of their own practices. In this way, we avoid the presumed objectivity of the narratives that the exhibitions offer to instead break with hegemonic discourses. It is a space of inquiry which encourages each person to make their own interpretation of the image and the story in order to use them to generate new imaginaries.

Dates:

• Saturday 14 December 12 pm
• Sunday 15 December 6 pm

Ángela Cuadra inquires into images that discuss concealment techniques used throughout recent history in a broad phenomenological study of invisibility. Based on different sources with pre-existing historical and semantic meanings, she aims to find new layers of meaning in artistic expression. Grounded on collage and approached with intuition, her works are developed in multiple media, ranging installations to video, drawing and expanded painting.

She has held exhibitions at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Today Museum (Beijing), Centro del Carmen (Valencia), Sant Andreu Contemporani (Barcelona), Fundación Cultural de Providencia (Providencia, Chile) and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) (Santiago de Compostela), among others. Since 2013, she has been working on the project space Salón, which she directs with her husband, Dai K S. She is also one of the founders of the first international fair of nonprofit spaces in Madrid, Supersimétrica.

Asunción Molinos Gordo and Andrea Pacheco González invite us to accompany them on a special tour of Déjà Vécu, during which they will share some of the research they have done since 2018 which gave rise to this exhibition.

This encounter with the artist and the curator encourages participants to reflect on the traces of the past that still survive today and to question the official narratives about history, cultural hierarchies and the construction of collective identity on the Iberian Peninsula. What has already been lived and what reappears, a concept captured by the title, are the common thread both of the works and of this artist’s inquiry.

The tour will also address Molinos Gordo’s working methodologies and collaboration with other disciplines, such as microbiology, anthropology and the occult sciences. The diverse array of media found in her works—such as installations, drawing, glasswork and video—offer an opportunity to address Spain’s ‘unofficial’ stories through an experience that is both contemplative and critical. In her first solo exhibition in a public institution in Madrid, the artist and curator also examine the exchange with participants in order to assert these stories and their dialogue with the present time.

Dates: Tuesday 30 April 7 pm | Saturday 25 May 12 noon | Saturday 29 June 12 noon.

Capacity: 20 people.

Prior registration free of charge by phoning +34 91 276 02 21 or emailing ca2m@madrid.org
 

We invite you to visit the exhibitions in company on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. One example is Déjà Vécu, the work by the artist Asunción Molinos Gordo, where you may wonder what mysteries the flint of Madrid harbours or what the social life inside the microcosm where human intestinal bacteria live is like.

You can also learn about the different sculptures that Teresa Solar has proposed for the first floor, or go up to the third floor to discover what stories the artist Ana Gallardo has brought back on her journey from Argentina.

Saturdays at 6:30 pm and Sundays at 12:30 pm. Register in advance by phoning 912760221, emailing ca2m@madrid.org or at the museum’s reception.

We are pleased to partner with Amecum on these tours, which suggest different ways to approach the works of these artists.

In an open dialogue on the exhibition The Origin of Forms, the artist Cristina Garrido and the exhibition curator Tania Pardo will discuss the factors that will determine the survival of the art system.

Thursday 26 October at 19:00

Meeting with Cristina Garrido and Tania Pardo, an open dialogue on The Origin of Forms

Wednesday 22 November at 19:00

Talk on the exhibition The Origin of Forms by Cristina Garrido with

Estrella de Diego. Essayist, Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and full member of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. 

Montserrat Moliner. Artist and manager of cultural projects.

Juan de Andrés Arias. Artist and researcher. 

Wednesday 13 December at 19:00

Talk on the exhibition The Origin of Forms by Cristina Garrido with

Selina Blasco. Professor at the UCM’s Department of Art History at the Faculty of Fine Arts. 

Daniel Gasol. Cultural worker. 

Concepción Elorza. Researcher at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

These visits will take us through works from the artist's early career to discover his interests in architecture, archaeology, hearing, domestic interiors, theatre, poetry and his optical floors.

This exhibition is conceived as a continuation of ‘Everything I See Will Survive Me’ (in the Sala Alcalá 31), which focused on the artist's work in the 1990s. Here, we will display works produced by the artist in the 1980s. In this exhibition, you can see some of the pieces that introduce you to Muñoz's lesser-known side, which you can discover through these tours.

‘Mediación para cinco pasamanos’ (Mediation for Five Handrails) proposes different approaches to this artist’s work, starting from concepts such as inclination, instruments of surveillance, presence/absence, the haunting of the everyday and sculpture/scene/narrative.

Agustín Pérez Rubio, co-curator of the exhibition, invites us to join him on a tour to discover and talk about the various layers of the work of the US-Chinese artist Martin Wong.

On this guided walkthrough with the curator we are invited to participate and revisit a particular time and place that were seminal for the social relations of class, race and sexual orientation in the USA in the 1980s and 90s especially in the area of New York City known as Loisaida and its social reality of criminality, street culture, graffiti and drugs.

Wong proffered himself as a vehicle to open up the debate on the representation of sexual and cultural minorities in art, particularly the Asian and Latino minorities in the USA.

We will glean an insight into “the Bad Chinese” as he called himself, through an analysis of the sociological and political aspects of his work, and, in doing so, underscoring the transfer of language to the medium of painting, the complex mesh of multiple cultures, his interest in systems of language and the symbolism of the people he portrayed.

If you accept the invitation we will share impressions and resonances with our own experiences.

DATES

• 10 December at 5:30 pm
• 17 December at 5:30 pm
• 7 January at 5:30 pm
• 14 January at 5:30 pm

Prior enrolment by ringing (+34) 91 276 02 21 or by email ca2m@madrid.org