Exhibitions

The construction of the CGAC building was carried out in dialogue with the transformation of the former gardens of the Convent of San Domingos de Bonaval into a park, thanks to the joint effort of Álvaro Siza Vieira and the Galician landscape architect, Isabel Aguirre. To celebrate this urban transformation of Santiago, Javier Riera (Avilés, Asturias, 1964) has devised a brief walk through the Bonaval Park at dusk—at the moment of sunset.

Nicolás Combarro (A Coruña, 1979) fits into a new spectrum of artists who work with photography. His work focuses on architecture and the concept of construction in coexistence with and feeding into the practice of documentation and intervention, the latter being understood as taking action on space and the landscape.

The close relationship between art and architecture throughout the 20th century has converted the idea of ‘construction’ into an essential key to understanding our relationship with space, landscape and the home, but above all with the practical experience of the artistic object.The actual creative act arises from what we can define as a constructive impulse.

In 2018, the year the 25th anniversary of the opening of the CGAC building is celebrated, its collection—which started in 1995 as a result of the combination of new purchases and loans from the Xunta de Galicia—is regarded as the powerful backbone of a comprehensive artistic and cultural project for Galicia.

Carlos Garaicoa (Havana, 1967) observes cities, architectures and unrealised dreams—some already forgotten and others still within reach. He interprets their story lines, their grievances and indelible memories and then, with a tireless creativity, he outlines different perspectives, grafting past and present.

Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942), a figure of reference in international art, is building a transdisciplinary discourse centred on criticism of the media; he places the extensive function of art in interaction with social sciences, the mass media and the new information technologies to reveal the linguistic mechanisms of power.

With the classic text of Gustave Flaubert as its starting point, this multi-channel installation by Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker is a revisionist take on the 19th century novel was filmed in Åland, Finland in summer 2012 and Paris, France in winter 2013.

Paraphrasing the title of perhaps the most experimental novel by Julio Cortázar, 62 / A Model Kit, the collection is conceived as a model kit, as an essential but pending task and always in progress for a museum. The exhibition as an attempt, proposes and confronts different models of narrative and historical approaches, between collision and dialogue, in the form of a critical outline.

Eduardo Batarda (Coimbra, 1943) is one of the most recognised artists in Portugal and Mise en abyme is his first solo exhibition in Spain. Known for his paintings and watercolours, his work was first influenced by English pop art, comics and illustration, halfway between figuration and abstraction.