Apresentação do livro Monument Machine de Jorge Ribalta
16 JUNHO > 18H30 I CAPELA FBAUL I ENTRADA LIVRE
Integrado nas conferências “Photography and the Left” a decorrer nos dias 16 e 17 de junho no MNAC, Jorge Ribalta realizará a apresentação do seu livro “Monument Machine” na Capela da Faculdade de Belas-Artes.
With “Monument Machine“ the Württembergischer Kunstverein will be showing the first solo exhibition in Germany by the Spanish photographic artist, theorist, and curator Jorge Ribalta (b. 1963 in Barcelona).
Ribalta’s often comprehensive series of analogue black-and-white photographs are rather focused on the incidental and subliminal than on obvious or sensational aspects. “Monument Machine“ presents a selection of six series in which he explores the relations between documentary photography, cultural heritage, and nationalism. It deals with the role played by the present-day cultural-heritage industries according to the internalization of national identities and fictions. What relevance has been assigned here to photography since its inception? Taking center stage are icons and monuments that, like flamenco, the Alhambra, or Charles V, represent “Spanishness”, as well as the shift from heavy industry to leisure and culture industries.
The exhibition is based on the eponymous solo show, co-produced by the Centro Guerrero in Granada and the Fundación Helga de Alvear in Cáceres.
Further Information: http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/program/2016/exhibitions/jorge-ribalta
Jorge Ribalta is an artist, researcher, editor and independent curator. He lives and works in Barcelona.
Curator of exhibitions (selection): Jo Spence. Beyond the Perfect Picture. Photography, Subjectivity, Antagonism (MACBA, Barcelona, 2005), Universal Archive. The Condition of the Document and the Modern Photographic Utopia (MACBA, Barcelona, 2008), A Hard, Merciless Light. The Worker-Photography Movement, 1926-1939 (Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2011), and Not Yet. On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism, 1972-1991 (Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2015).
Editor of the books (selection): Public Photographic Spaces. Propaganda Exhibitions from Pressa to Family of Man, 1928-1955(MACBA, 2009), The Worker Photography Movement, 1926-1939. Essays and Documents(Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2011) and Not Yet. On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism. Essays and Documents, 1972-1991 (Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2015).
Has been Head of Public Programs at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) between 1999 and 2009.