Francesc Abad revisited

The exhibition brings together some of the most outstanding works of the career of the Catalan artist, precursor of conceptualism in Catalonia and internationally recognized for the political commitment of his proposal, closely linked to historical memory and exile. The choice of words in the title is an example of this, as Masanés points out: it is the free translation of "the French expression gens de rient, which, among other meanings, is used to designate socially ignored people" . Against indifference, Abad's work is a poignant reminder of what we would do well not to forget, such as the Holocaust, Nazism and the Spanish Civil War, while also leaving room for concern for climate emergency, which is incorporated from newly created works, such as Urbicidi and Eriçó and landscape.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of Contemporaneity-memory and resistance, un voyage autour de la table – Je brousse les images (2024), an editorial proposal halfway between artist book, visual essay and catalog raisonné , co-edited by MUME, the Granollers Art Museum and the Bòlit, Center for Contemporary Art in Girona. The book, presented at the Bòlit headquarters last January 18, is also the first issue of the Girona art center's new publishing collection, Atlas - in tribute to Aby Warburg's project - and aims to establish spaces of dialogue between some of the most relevant figures in the recent history of Catalan art - such as Abad, without a doubt - and today's young artists, focusing attention not on the generational distance, but also on the existence of affinities and points of contact in the proposals of the two artists. On this occasion, the artist chosen to accompany him is Enric Farrés Duran, who has made an artistic intervention in the edition and with whom Abad had previously collaborated in an activity linked to the exhibition En tempo real. The Rafael Tous collection of conceptual art (MACBA, 2021).