Photo of Iris Tonies by Alexandra Richter
26 INDEPENDENT ART
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JiM Contemporani
The gallery came together because Scottish-born artist Jack Davidson was tired of feeling excluded from the local art scene, which he felt was so busy promoting the work of the locals that non-Catalan artists had an up-hill struggle to find representation in Barcelona. “It comes out of that do-it-yourself punk ethic,” says Davidson, who has worked in the past as a preparator for major art museums like New York’s Guggenheim while supporting himself as an abstract artist-of-note. When he and his Catalan partner Miguel Rodés Parellada decided to turn a part of their rambling modernist flat on the Rambla de Catalunya into a space devoted to showing the latest work of artists who had shared a similar frustration, JiM (Jack and Miguel) Contemporani was born. Their recent exhibition schedule has included the work of Guillermo Pfaff. While the gallerists’ taste tends to run toward painters of the abstract, they have also shown recently the soulful photographs and watercolours of San Franciscans Nina and John Zurier, who are currently showing at the Sao Paulo Bienal. The elegant space provides a relaxed meeting-point atmosphere for patrons and artists without the pressure of the regular commercial gallery environment. An upcoming show this winter will feature works by American-born, Scottish-based Fritz Welch, and local talent Ruben Verdu. “We provide a space for artists to present projects that they otherwise might not get a chance to exhibit. We bring to Barcelona art and artists who perhaps normally would not be shown here, while situating local artists in an international setting.” Open by appointment, or to get on the mailing list for the monthly previews at JiM, visit their web page: www.facebook.com/JimContemporani. Rambla Catalunya 43, 2º 2ª, Tel. 659 219 666
24-26. Independent artPDF.indd 4
Estudio Nómada
Talented Dutch artist Iris Tonies could have been complacent about her success and focused soley on her own career. Water is a recurring motif for Tonies, who lives on a sailing ship in the Barcelona marina. She has won acclaim for her gorgeous aqua-colored textural sculptures of wave-like forms and her work has been commissioned by institutions as prestigious as Barcelona’s Museo Marítim. When the sculptor arrived with her husband, Arnout Krediet, from Holland four years ago, she also was surprised at how few opportunities there were for foreign artists to show their work in Barcelona. Tonies decided to turn a bad situation around and converted first one, and then another, ancient stone space on the Palma Sant Just in the Gothic Quarter into studio spaces for other artists. She is now the Director of Estudio Nómada, which she conceives of as part of an ideal art academy scenario whose students re-locate, year-by-year, from one city to another as a kind of moveable feast. (A second branch has since opened in Hong Kong.) The cooperative arrangement in Barcelona provides not only artist studio spaces, but also a shared gallery that serves as an exhibition space for the participants. Training for foreign as well as local art students, whose foreign status confers upon them the unofficial monikor of “nómadas”, gives them direction in sculpture, drawing, painting, photography and alternative media by the small international faculty that includes Tonies and Krediet. Their ambitious exhibition schedule is innovative and varied. Last year, during a performance called, “I’M CLEAN!” passers-by were invited to write down their guilty pleasures on strips of cloth that were later hand-laundered in big soapy wash buckets whose suds ran down the Carrer Palma Sant Just. The gallery/ school is a popular stop on the Tallers Oberts (Open Studios) walking tours organized by FAD (Foment de les Arts I del Disseny). The prestigious video fair Loop Barcelona now includes the Galeria Nómada as a venue in its annual spring events. www.estudio-nomada.com Palma de Sant Just 7, Tel. 622 68 90 32.
10/24/12 1:28:39 PM