Agenda GuiaBCN

Say, thing. Joan Brossa and the object poems is a series of exhibitions that explores the discursive and formal paths that have consolidated the object arts as a current of artistic creation and thought. Each of the exhibitions that make up the series features a significant selection of object poems by Joan Brossa in dialogue with works by artists who are positioned at the intersection between the object and language. The exhibitions do not establish a genealogy around Brossa's production, but rather identify areas of contact between artistic works and objects that, both in terms of their context of creation and in terms of their time period, represent disparate positions. This disparity aims to construct a kind of "subterranean argument", a cross-cutting and common reading framework that expands the models for receiving object poems.

Although the bulk of Brossa's production features recurring references to popular culture, partying, death and transmigration, or to issues such as anticlericalism or anti-authoritarianism, the exhibitions that make up the cycle do not adopt any of these ideas, as if they were a master story or binding concepts. Instead, these ideas appear intertwined, without imposing a hierarchy and stimulating overall interpretations, as if the exhibition were in fact a disorganised drawer in which the relationships of familiarity and plot that connect certain objects and others were implicit. It is precisely the thematic, temporal and spatial distances between the works brought together that underline their singularity and strangeness.

Artists featured in the first exhibition:  Denise A. Aubertin, Joan Brossa, Henri Chopin, Maria Loboda, Henrik Olesen and  Rosemarie Trockel. 

As part of this cycle, the Centre de les Arts Lliures continues in the pursuit of the Joan Brossa Foundation’s mission to preserve, exhibit and disseminate Brossa's legacy while expanding its interpretation and universalising his work and his transgressive spirit. The next exhibition in the cycle will take place in the spring of 2025, when new pieces by both Joan Brossa and other artists yet to be confirmed will be added to the exhibition hall. The last exhibition in the cycle will end on 27 June 2027.