Condensed in « Crier sur les toits », an iconic work inviting citizens to occupy rooftop terraces to speak out, Jordi Colomer’s work is always participatory. Designed like a city, the major retrospective dedicated to him by the MACBA, Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art, also provides an opportunity for more theoretical reflection on the journey of the Catalan artist.
We have been familiar with Jordi Colomer’s work in France for a long time, especially since his major 2008 exhibition at the Jeu de Paume’s museum. This is why we eagerly anticipated a comprehensive retrospective of the Catalan artist’s work, now finally presented at the MACBA, under the curatorship of Martí Peran. His oldest pieces, dating back to the early 1990s are displayed alongside his most recent ones in a brilliant, non-hierarchical setup where visitors wander without boundaries, or attempt to navigate through a map as they would explore an unfamiliar city.
We knew his famous Anarchitekton (2002-2004) where a character literally carried buildings on the end of a pole through Barcelona, Bucarest, Brasilia and Osaka; Crier sur les toits (2011) inviting to citizens to occupy rooftop terraces to speak out; or his car topped with a neon sign reading “No? Future!” designed for the city of Le Havre (France) in 2006. These iconic works sit alongside more than fifty others installations, models, videos, performances and equally exciting projects, all of which humorously and ironically explore profound topics such as nomadism, the periphery, community, fiction and the limits of utopia.
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September 12, 2024
