Art Week arrives with about sixty activities

The third edition of the Art Week of Catalonia will take place from November 23 to December 1 with sixty activities by fifty organizations. The 'Unexpected Visits' project – where museums invite different artists to exhibit their work – expands its scope with four facilities and 22 selected works. On the other hand, as a novelty, 'Invited artists' is being launched, a proposal through which art galleries invite medium and long-established artists to exhibit without any commitment to the spaces in question.

The program for this year's edition was presented this Tuesday at the Il·lacions Gallery with the presence of the president of Galeries d'Art de Catalunya, Benito Padilla; the Art Week coordinator, Maribel Navarro; and the curator of 'Unexpected visits', Montse Frisach. During his speech, Padilla remarked that the galleries must be "linked" to the social dynamics in order to give more "visibility" to the programming.

"We have an important role ahead of us", he insisted, "to end the fact that the galleries are a closed and practically private space, to occupy more of the public space". He has also insisted that one of his main tasks is to "recover, dignify and resignify the role of art".

Art Week is the main global art event in Catalonia, which was born in 2021 under the organization of Galeries d'Art de Catalunya to bring art closer to the population as a whole, expand its events to whole of the territory and encourage collaboration between private and public agents working in the sector.

In this sense, Navarro explained that the first and second editions served as a "barometer" to capture general interests, and that in this third edition he has committed to continuing to offer a "plural and transversal" project that allows capturing the regular public, but also those "who like culture, but who are not so used to going to museums and galleries".

A program full of activities

Between November 23 and December 1, this year's program will offer exhibitions, cultural routes (on foot and by bus), concerts, performances, dialogues, presentations, screenings, meetings with artists, workshops and other experiences. Several art galleries from all over Catalonia have programmed specific exhibitions on the occasion of Art Week, proposing various trends and styles, with artists ranging from the abstract to the figurative.

On the other hand, one of the outstanding novelties of 2023 is the 'Invited Artists' proposal, where nine art galleries have invited medium and long-term professionals to exhibit without any commitment to these spaces. In this line, the invited artists are Artur Aguilar at the A|34 Gallery, Anton Roca at the Anquin's Gallery, Albert Macaya at the Antoni Pinyol Gallery, Ana de Martos at the Artur Ramon Art Gallery, Jordi Cerdà at the Espai Cavallers Gallery, Pere Belles at the Atelier Gallery, Jordi Tolosa at the Guntrian Gallery, Sílvia Japkin at the Rubén Torres Gallery and Víctor Pérez - Porro at the Villa del Arte Gallery.

At the same time, and after last year's success, Art Week has chosen to repeat 'Unexpected visits', a project where different museums program exhibitions in which they invite different artists to exhibit their work in a dialogue between styles and environments, in some cases contrasting.

The curator of the proposal, Montse Frisach, has celebrated that this time there will be four exhibitions - "twice as many as last year - which will be held simultaneously at the Can Framis Museum of the Fundació Privada Antoni Vila Casas in Barcelona, at the Museum of Maricel de Sitges, in the Museum of Lleida and the Museum of Modern Art in Tarragona.

The 22 selected works come from the galleries' warehouses and many are unknown to the public, thus showing the diversity of styles of the forty galleries associated with the GAC. The itinerary of the four exhibitions includes works that go from the end of the 19th century to the present day and represents a meeting between artists of different generations, but from a contemporary perspective.

Routes and guided tours

A total of 16 guided tours make up the Art Week, aimed at bringing the contents closer and placing them in their context. There are guided tours of museums (Disseny Hub de Barcelona, Art Museum of Girona, Raset Museum of contemporary art in Cervià, Museu del Cântir d'Argentona), foundations (Suñol, Sorigué de Lleida, Mas Miró de Mont-roig del Camp), art centers (Casa Vicens de Barcelona, Arte-Contemporary de la Ràpita, Castell de Vila-seca, Center Grarriga - Grau de Sant Cugat, La Vinya dels Artistes de la Pobla de Cèrvoles, Sala de Vilanova) and art galleries (Artur Ramon, Sala Dalmau or Canals, among others).

As for the routes, there will be two formats: one on foot and one by bus. The two on foot are through Lleida and Sant Cugat, while the two on the Art Bus are in Barcelona, Reus and Sitges. The program also presents proposals such as a creative drawing workshop at Casa Vicens, another introduction to street art at the Espai Cavallers gallery in Lleida, one on color at the Antoni Pinyol Gallery in Reus and one on molds at the Maristany Art Center of Sant Cugat.

This is the case with the concerts, a recital by the duo Sinèrgies has been scheduled, with an exhibition by Joan B. Domènech and wine tasting at Mas Blanch i Jove - La vinya dels artistes, and one by Maria Pascual and Miguel Gistau at Galeria Jordi paschal There will also be a performance of Other Trash: Stop Theater at the Fundació Joan Brossa - Center de les Arts Lliures.

Finally, as for the meetings with artists, they will be in the galleries themselves, as well as in their studios or with the artists resident at Casa Aymat.