2016/ 2017 - LITERARY CITIES

XIII Small Format International Contemporary Art Exhibition MX Espai Spain

Galerie Himmelreich, Magdeburg, Germany
6. Dezember 2016 - 5. Januar 2017

Galerie Xina ART Barcelona Spain
17. September - 14. Oktober 2016

Arteria Gallery Igualada Spain
20. October - 27. Nov 2016

Literary Cities

(Text exhibition catalogue)  MXESPAI 1010 / Marga Ximenez / Nora Ancarola

XIII International Exhibition of Small Format Contemporary Art, is the title of the new group exhibition presented by MXESPAI in this edition. Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project (Das Passagen Werk) places us in the Paris of the early 20th century, a new urban territory in which one lived and moved with a daily existence in mind that was over and done with, full of achievements that had become the flotsam of a modernity gone adrift. Benjamin’s Paris is an example of how a city can be travelled by means of its quotations and fragmentary texts. Our theme on this occasion calls for us to read the city through its smaller productions, its creative people and its texts.

LITERARY CITIES, XIII International Exhibition of Small Format Contemporary Art, the new proposal presented by MX ESPAI 1010, is focused on the city as an opening to numerous thought-packed questions about the role of art, interrogating us and our identity as artists, enquiring into our responsibility as professionals in a field of activity that is increasingly less circumscribed by territories and more relevant to a shared social space.

As in previous meetings, our aim is for this to be not only an exhibition of art objects but a sum of the diverse gestures of art in the present. MX Espai suggests the theme,in order to contextualize the display and thereby give it meaning and coherence. To work on an idea compels us to think in a certain line, a direction, and imposes a sharper attention to the wherefores of what we do. Each work is a little sphere of suspended time. A map of drawn timescapes; artificial spaces which order our thinking by means of a visual language and warn us not to trust the beauty of these artefacts. They are instruments, structures and schemes of an interdisciplinary nature. The players of this game deploy their creative activity as if there were an inexorable law putting them inside an interrogation of the game itself.

It is our pleasure to provide an opportunity for artists from all over the world to show their work in Barcelona. From the First International Exhibition of Small Format Contemporary Art up to the present we have been able to welcome works by over 500 artists from more than 50 different countries.
Participants such as Ane Henriksen, Goro Nagano, Gyöngy Laky, Hannelle Ollakka, Junko Suzuki, Benxamín Álvarez, Hideho Tanaka, Helga Borisch, Carles Pujol, Benet Rossell, Carles Hac Mor, Carlos Martínez, Lone Villaume, Maija Paavola, Martí Ribas, Aurèlia Muñoz, Hee Oh Myung, Akiko Kotani, Carmen de los Llanos, Ursula Gerber Senger, Yuu Izaki, Pere Noguera, Cecilia Postiglioni, Katharina Gun Oehlert, Marina Ramoneda, Yukimaro, Ade Boyle, Ester Xargay, Marta Darder, Jordi Benito and along etcetera had one-man shows in the space that we ran since 1999 up to now: The MX ESPAI 1010 on Carrer Llibreteria (Barcelona).

But for this edition MX ESPAI 1010 is relying on the premises and the collaboration of La Xina A.R.T., in Barcelona, Galeria Arteria, in Igualada, and Gallerie Himmelreich, in Magdeburg (Germany). The call has been answered by over 150 artists, of which we are showing the 49 participants selected by our jury. Among them we can find pieces by Mireia Clotet, Babette Werth, Pia Remedios, Xesco Mercé, Joseph Warren, Anne Moreno, Kioko Kumai, Marta Ballvé, Ursula Gerber Senger, Ana Pulido or Helga Borish, artists who once again show works in multi-media techniques, making this year’s exhibition a place for reflection, in which the context of textile is part of how an idea is revealed and woven matter is simultaneously the support, the concept, and part of the script.

MXESPAI 1010 / Marga Ximenez / Nora Ancarola