Muntadas: Emisio/Recepcio

March 24 – May 10, 2005

Kent Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of two early projects by Muntadas, an internationally recognized Spanish artist whose practice constitutes an ongoing critical examination of the media landscape and the power structures behind it.

Kent’s show will feature two installations, both of which use slide projection: Emisio/Recepcio of 1974/2002, which has never been shown in New York, and La Television of 1980, which has not been seen in New York since it was included in the 1983 exhibition “Dark Rooms” at Artists’ Space. Emisio/Recepcio uses two slide projectors to juxtapose a series of images of TV sets taken in public and private spaces with a series of images of people watching TV in the same spaces. In La Television a series of eighty single images taken from the press are projected over two adjacent walls in whose corner a mute television set sits on a high shelf, accompanied by the sound of Italian singer Enzo Jannacci chanting caustically about TV. In both these projects Muntadas addresses assumptions regarding the structure and dissemination of information in the context of issues of objectivity and subjectivity, of active and passive agency, and of public and private space.

Originally from Barcelona, Muntadas has lived and worked in New York since 1971. His work has been exhibited widely, both in this country and abroad, and has been the subject of several surveys and monographs. Recent publications include On Translation, published by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona on the occasion of his exhibition there in 2002; On Translation: Erinnerungsräume, published by the Neues Museum Weserburg on the occasion of his 2004 Bremen show; and Proyectos, published by Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City in 2004, also on the occasion of a survey of his work. This summer Muntadas will have a solo exhibition at the Spanish Pavilion of the Venice Biennial, and later in the year he will show at Forteresse de Salses in Salses, France.