Under the title, Love, Think and Resist. Encounter Between Two Collections, a new presentation is offered of the ARTIUM collection, on this occasion, together with works from another major collection: that of the Fundación «la Caixa». An inspiring encounter articulated around a theme exhibition that aims to offer new ways of looking at and interpreting contemporary art.

From 2007 March 29 to August 19
South Gallery

The title of the exhibition, Love, Think and Resist, is taken from the thoughts of the philosopher Santiago López Petit concerning the «life wish». This idea, developed in his trilogy of recent books, the last of which is entitled, Amar y Pensar: El odio de querer vivir (Love and Think: The hatred of wanting to live), López Petit proposes the concept of the «life wish» as a challenge to life itself, in response to the demands imposed by a delirious, vertiginous world. According to the author, to love, think and resist are the most valuable resources available to us in order to face this difficult challenge.

This conviction can also be traced in art. To speak of art is to speak of life, of our own existence and therefore, of that «life wish»- a wish to confront the world. In spite of the fact that a portion of current artistic production is influenced by commercialism, by excessive speed and by a penchant for the spectacular, fortunately there are still some artists with a strong commitment, be this emotional, intellectual or political, to the interpretation of and confrontation with life.

The eighteen artists included in the exhibition are eloquent proof of this. Their works invite us to reflect on life and to take stock of the world in which we live - in short, to love, think and resist. Such simple objects as a bicycle with the personal belongings of a tramp, are used as an icon of solitude and desperation of the marginalised inhabitants of our cities; a few hypodermic needles are used to recreate the ambience of one of today's drug-ridden cities. Other artists speak to us metaphorically about the silence and lack of communication that characterises contemporary society, a silence that, on occasions, is imposed by the powers that be in order to stifle the cries of the weaker members of our community. The victims of this unjust system and its most terrible consequence, war, are also referred to in this exhibition.

The exhibition includes artists who transform the act of creation into an intimist experience in order to delve into emotions representative of the human condition. The obsessive wish to resist the passage of time and to attain eternal youth, the anguish caused by the loss of innocence, the emotive and sometimes complex relationship with the mother, the family and home environment, or the end of marital love and the consequent pain and malice this generates, are some of the issues dealt with, extracted, as it were, from life itself and in which many of us can see ourselves reflected.

As Santiago López Petit points out in his last book «La vida es una palabra. El querer vivir, un grito» (Life is a word. The life wish, a scream). Without doubt, echoes of the responses of these artists to the world in which we live can be heard in all of the works included in this presentation of the collections of ARTIUM and of «la Caixa».

Antoni Abad
Doug Aitken
Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Txomin Badiola
Stephen Dean
Tacita Dean
El Perro
Leopoldo Ferrán eta Agustina Otero
Guillermo Kuitka

LIN Tianmiao
LIU Jin
MA Liuming
MIAO Xiaochun
RONG Rong
SHAOYINONG & MUCHEN
SHENG Qi
SHI Guorui
WANG Jin
WANG Qingsong
WENG Peijun

Curators: Daniel Castillejo and Nimfa Bisbe

A production of: