A major victory is the liberation of the whole of Domenech i Montaner’s original building for exhibition purposes, including an impressive new auditorium. This was achieved by reforming the hidden back of the building, multiplying the amount of office space there from 185 square metres to some 376 square metres.
The highlight, however, for which there is the longest queue, is a sock. The Fundació’s key objective was to clear up the rooftop space of the office building, formerly a makeshift dump and a blot on the visual landscape when contemplated from Carrer València. As Tàpies’s crowning 'Núvol i silla' ('Cloud and chair') responded to the need to shore up an unattractive vertical drop between the Fundació and the buildings around it, so the new terrace plays host to the artist’s most controversial piece: the mock-up for the giant 'Mitjó' (sock in Catalan) he had been commissioned to make in 1991 to be the centrepiece within the MNAC’s oval atrium; the project was eventually abandoned, but not before polarising Catalunya’s artistic and political community, which may go some way to explaining the public's interest in seeing it today. Or perhaps, they just enjoy the sight of huge footwear and like to think of what might have been.
From May 14th until August 1st, temporary exhibition slots will look at the workbooks of the materialist Eva Hesse, alongside a consideration of the convergences and divergences of the brilliant Israeli psychoanalyst-painter Bracha Ettinger and the fascinating collage artist Ria Verhaeghe, from Belgium.
Please note that this is an extended version of the review published in the April 2010 edition of Metropolitan.
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