LOOP Barcelona BALCONY proposes an overview of video and film today, within the context of artgenève. There lies the reason for the name ‘Balcony’.

The section features 10 stands as individual projections rooms, in the likes of the LOOP Fair. The selection results into a series of monographic presentations, so to facilitate the reception of the medium while slowing down a fair’s hectic pace. Picked among the participants of last year’s LOOP Fair in Barcelona, the galleries have been selected with the intention to establish a dynamic dialogue with artgenève’s overall programme. This collaboration was first initiated at LOOP Barcelona 2019, with a dinner-gathering and party promoted by artgenève at the Ocaña Rastaurant in Plaza Real, an emblematic venue located in the centre of the city.

“131 minutes & 48 seconds of video art”

In museums, biennials and galleries people tend to wonder about the duration of the videos, and this is exaclty why we decided to emphasize the temporal aspect of the medium – and particularly in a country like Switzerland !

Hence we thought of the title “131 minutes & 48 seconds of video art”, which simply refers to the total duration of the works presented in our section. Following the same reasoning, the participating galleries are being addressed and distributed according to the duration of the film they present. Time, thus, becomes the guiding principle of the section in its entirety.

5’10’’
David Maljkovic, Afterform, 2013 / Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna

6’
Zbynek Baladran, Catastrophe, 2019 / Gandy gallery, Bratislava

6’03’’
Cecilia Bengolea, Lighting Dance, 2018 / àngels barcelona, Barcelona

6’19’’
Nashashibi / Skaer, Lamb, 2019 / GRIMM, Amsterdam & NY

8’32’’
Angelika Markul, Marella, 2019 / Albarrán Bourdais, Madrid

9’26’’
Adrián Balseca, Phantom Recorder, 2018 / Galería SENDA, Barcelona

11’50’’
Olga Chernysheva, Park, 2017 / Iragui, Moscow

22’14’’
Patrick Hough, And If In A Thousand Years, 2017 / narrative projects, London

27’49’’
Sigurður Guðjónsson, Enigma, 2019 / BERG Contemporary, Reykjavik

29’
Peter Forgács, Venom-A Diva in Exile, 2018 / Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest

About the time we live in

LOOP Barcelona, the platform that since 2003 has been dedicated to the study and promotion of the moving image, has been invited to participate to artgenève 2020 with a section dedicated to offer visitors a glimpse of the broad panorama of video and film in today’s contemporary art scene.

Departing from a selection of 10 international art galleries, the program aims at exploring through video and film a series of closely intertwined topics, which deeply affect our fragile contemporaneity: the global economy, ecology, technology, and migration.

In an era marked by the impact of uncontrolled human activity on Earth, the importance of protecting our ecosystem becomes a core research subject for contemporart art and other disciplines alike. The collaboration between diverse agents working in fields as different as science and dance, results in the production of new forms of knowledge. And this is precisely what viewers will see reproduced on the screens of LOOP Barcelona BALCONY at artgenève.

The selection in details

The connecting thread between nature and culture, its close observation and its effects on humanity, becomes clear in the works of artists such as Angelika Markul (Albarrán Bourdais, Madrid), Sigurôr Guojonsson (BERG Contemporary, Reykjavik), Cecilia Bengolea (àngels barcelona, Barcelona) or Adrián Balseca (Galería SENDA, Barcelona).

At the same time, it is our fragility as human beings that is constantly pushed into the foreground, as we are also affected by geopolitical and geo-economic affairs in the construction of our personal (hi)stories. The imagery produced by artists illustrating personal testimonies –in the form of a shared collectivity or a common memory –, can be found in the works by Peter Forgács (Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest), Nashibi / Skaer (GRIMM, Amsterdam), Olga Chernysheva (Iragui, Moscow) or Patrick Hough (narrative projects, London).

Finally, let’s not forget that the origin of video art, is intrinsically linked to society’s technological advancements. This is, indeed, the last thread to touch upon when thinking about the themes that LOOP Barcelona BALCONY aims to survey. A critical view of the power embodied in the algorithms of a digital society, controlled by big corporations, is something to be perceived in the work by Zbynek Baladran (Gandy gallery, Bratislava) whereas David Maljković’s film (Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna), inspired by a cartoon published in a Croatian architectural magazine from the 1960s, satirizes modern architecture and urban planning.