The innovative gallery festival focused on the role of ‘The Collector’.

After the success of last year’s premier of “THE COLLECTOR IS PRESENT” Barcelona Gallery Weekend presents the second edition from May 9 – 11, 2024 inviting audiences to reflect on the act of collecting and the different ways of approaching art- while offering the opportunity to discover works belonging to private and institutional collections in the galleries.

Increasingly contemporary art galleries need additional events to bring physical audiences into the gallery spaces. The once-a-year ‘gallery weekend’ or art fair is not enough these days…. as audiences are generally viewing shows online- instead of attending openings. Many weekends and art associations are creating additional events. In addition to BGW’s traditional September gallery weekend. The Collector is Present is opting for an innovative performative approach to its sprint event by focusing on the allusive collector. Inviting collectors to publicly participate in performances, discussions and reinterpretations of ongoing gallery exhibitions.

Collectors who (are) exhibit(ed) in the galleries:
ADN Galeria opens Les faits sont têtus, the works by Alán Carrasco in Berta Caldentey collection. On Saturday, the artist and the collector will offer a guided tour accompanied with vermouth.

Bombon Projects presents Words over breakfast, a breakfast in conversation with both
Lebanese Marie Zolamian -artist that will be on show at the gallery from May 8th-, and Amira
Solh -urban planner based in Barcelona-, about the artist’s exhibition at the gallery and her work
in relation to the Lebanese context.

Dilalica participates with Curving the light, a guided visit with Sergi Álvarez Riosalido, curator
of the exhibition mecamísticas, in conversation with the artist Max Milà Serra and Vicente
Matallana, director of NewArtFoundation: an artistic community whose aim is to develop new
technological, scientific, conceptual and social practices.

Under the title “Lo importante es cómo acaba (What matters is how it ends)” ̧ ethall gallery and the
artist Beatriz Olabarrieta (whose exhibition opens the same day) invites the collector Gerardo
van Waalwijk van Doorn and the artist Violeta Mayoral to hold a confrontation on the
triangulation between the figure of the collector, the gallerist and the artist, based on the
dissection of the recently opened exhibition and other works contributed by the guests
themselves.

In the context of the exhibition by Marla Jacarilla at Fuga, the collector Carlos Manzano arrives at the gallery to show other works by the artist that are part of his private collection. The expanded exhibition will be only on show on Saturday and the collector will offer a commented tour followed by a mutual interview around Jacarilla’s presence in Manzano’s collection.

Manel Gili, owner of the legendary SIS Marcs (Framing Gallery), opens with Galería Alegría SIS D SIS, featuring works from his collection by six artists: Antonio Ballester, Anselmo Boix-Vives, Manuel Duque, Ramiro Fernández, Jesús Llamas and Oriol Vilapuig. Manel Gili and the gallerists will hold a conversation on Gili’s beginnings in the world of framing, his exhibition programme since 2005, his relationship with artists, and the art collection he has been building up over all these years of activity together with his wife, Maria
Antonia.

In relation to the exhibition La Ocaña, which can be visited at Galeria Mayoral until June 1st, the gallery
invites Marc Giró, a journalist who owns works by José Pérez Ocaña, to comment on the life and
work of one of the main figures of the Barcelona countercultural movement of the seventies.

Pigment Gallery invites us to reflect on What is it that links us to a work of art and to the person
who creates it in an encounter with the artist Julio Vaquero and the art collector’s Ramón
Córdoba and Ignacio Martínez. Pigment will be showing some of the works from Córdoba and Martínez’s collections.

RocioSantaCruz presents Teresa Gancedo vs Evru, an encounter between Fundació Vila
Casas and the gallery. Natàlia Chocarro, president art advisor at the foundation, establishes a
dialogue between works by Evru belonging to the Vila Casas Collection, and pieces from the
exhibition The Body of Symbols by Teresa Gancedo in RocioSantaCruz. The exhibition can be
visited from Thursday to Saturday, and there will be a conversation between Natàlia Chocarro,
the artist Teresa Gancedo and the gallerist Rocío Santa Cruz.

Galeria Senda presents Coleccionismos Rizomáticos, a dialogue between the collector Manuel
Expósito and two artists whose practices integrate the act of collecting objects and archiving
them in cabinets of contemporary wonders: Antoni Miralda’s Archivo de Food Cultura and
Gastón Lisak’s Arqueología Mundana project. The project takes a look at the practice of
collecting as a living tool for building virtuous affective relationships, both with objects and living
beings. Expósito will present a series of works by Gastón Lisak from his private collection, in
dialogue with pieces that he selected from Miralda’s archive. Curated by Mariella
Franzoni.

How We See The World, by the artist Barry Salzman, is on show at Suburbia Contemporary.
In this context, Filippo Tattoni-Marcozzi, whose collection features some of the works on show, participates in a conversation moderated by Stefano Pisci, director of Studio Gianluca Iadema
and art advisor that will address the landscape as a catalyst of memory.

Uxval Gochez hosts Poemas sugeridos (Suggested poems), a performance in which the
collector Marcel Pérez Iserte will be led by the suggestions of Alina Zaikina, an artist present in
his collection. Zaikina will surprise him with a reading of a selection of poems that refer to the
conceptual diversity of Iserte’s collection.

On the art of collecting publications:
Chiquita Room presents Apnea. An evening of free diving. With the intention of aesthetically
and conceptually exploring his collection, but also of constructing a blurred self-portrait through
his interests, the publisher and bookseller Luis Cerveró will share some of the publications in his
library in a public presentation. For the occasion, the founder of the publishing house Terranova
invites the musician and visual artist Arnau Sala to accompany him, generating live improvised
music in dialogue with the books, replacing words and concrete explanations with a more
abstract and evocative language that captures the mystery implicit in every collecting gesture.

The recently inaugurated new merged galleries Prats Nogueras Blanchard has invited Mela Dávila Freire, a curator with extensive experience in archives and documentary collections, to show part of her personal library, a carefully selected and organized collection, with subtle connections between its
elements, forming a network of meaning.

The complete “The Collector is Present” PDF can be found here >