Muntadas: Spectacle / Power / Mass Media

MUNTADAS: Spectacle / Power / Mass Media 
curated by Carolina Grau

"Muntadas (born in Barcelona 1942) exhibits for the first time at Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, in Lisbon. The exhibition Spectacle / Power / Mass Media presents works from the 1990’s to the 2010’s, most of them never shown before in Portugal. 

Muntadas’ multidisciplinary practice explores and analyses the social, political and anthropological phenomena of our world, in order to reveal the way in which reality is configured and controlled by the mass media. His work uncovers the power mechanisms that support the systems of persuasion by using the same strategies of the mass media. 

“Muntadas rejects a linear reading of the present and proposes a history that is a combination of multiple events, including memories of the past and visions of the future.” Michael Tarantino Artforum, Feb. 1995 
Two works from the 90s are based on the analysis of gesture as a symbol of power.  Portraits is a series of silkscreen prints exploring discourses in front of cameras with images taken from the media of public figures addressing an audience, one of the most recurrent images in the media landscape. The super enlarged images focus on the act of talking, isolating the mouth and the microphone, suspending the action and making any reference to the identity of the public figure, to the location and the event disappear. The microphone becomes a symbol and a prosthesis of power. On the other hand, Architektur/ Räume /Gesten II is a photo collage series focusing on the relationship between a hand gesture, the interior space for decision-making space and the exterior of an urban building. The combination of the images in this tryptic unfolds to establish relationships between gestures of authority, agreement, consensus and imposition, boardrooms designed specifically for people who control a company to meet and take decisions, and architecture as representation of the economic and political power in post-industrial society. 

The sphere of spectacle is reflected upon in three works based on football, investigating topics such as mass events, identity, violence and sport. They belong to the series On Translation which analyses the concept of ‘translation’ from wide-ranging perspectives, tackling linguistics, as well as economic, political and cultural issues. Football has become one of the biggest mass media spectacles in the world followed by millions of viewers, feeding the lucrative sports business. There are various packaging and rules for the way in which the ‘spectacle’ is presented by the producers and managers, to send messages to the audience. In international competitions played by national teams, there is the ritual of singing the national anthem at the beginning of the match.  On Translation: Hinmes discloses the different social behaviours of the players during that moment in order to reflect on patriotism, colonization and globalization. 

One of the most exciting moments in a football match is when a goal is scored. On Translation: Celebracions makes manifest a chain of such reactions and rituals, reflecting on the personal, intimate and almost erotic reactions between the players as well as on the universal phenomena of interaction between the player and the sports fans. The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) is responsible for the organisation of the international tournaments and their rules. On Translation: FIFA 2014 is a mural of different images related to football, presented during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil, where advertising, fanaticism, violence and control point to the flip side of ‘spectacle’."

Carolina Grau (curator)