The Cinema Effect. Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image. Dream. CaixaForum Barcelona

The cinema is everywhere nowadays: on television, on computers, on mobile phones, etc. And the cinematic language has become crucial to understanding contemporary art and culture. Now, ”la Caixa” Foundation presents a new exhibition which explores the cinema's influence on the way in which our visual culture is constructed. The Cinema Effect. Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image is a project divided into two parts, Realisms and Dreams. This distinction is made in order to focus on the two dimensions that the cinema has occupied since its birth: "dreams", as seen in the dreamlike dimension in the films of Georges Méliès; and "realisms", exemplified in the documentaries of the Lumière brothers.

To reflect on these two branches in the cinematic arts, the exhibition features a selection of works by contemporary artists who work with documentary images and multimedia installations to speak to viewers about universal ideas: the image of the present, the construction of memory, subjectivity, simulation... Dreams, the second part of the project, now presented at CaixaForum Barcelona, delves into the most obscure nooks and crannies of the imagination and fantasy. The thirteen artists selected transport viewers to a place that may reflect our everyday life or actually take us through the mirror, pointing the way to another reality. Dreams features works by Andy Warhol, Douglas Gordon, Bruce Conner, Rodney Graham, Tacita Dean, Christoph Girardet, Anthony McCall, Kelly Richardson, Michael Bell-Smith, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Siebren Versteeg, Wolfgang Staehle, Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler.

The curators of The Cinema Effect. Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image. Dreams, an exhibition jointly organised by ”la Caixa” Social Outreach Programmes and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, are Kerry Brougher, Anne Ellegood, Kelly Gordon and Kristen Hileman. The exhibition will be open to the public at CaixaForum Barcelona from 18 May to 4 September 2011 as part of the programme for the Barcelona Screen Festival.     More information in the PDF press release