NEWART centre – Centro de arte digital y tecnológico en Reus

Lleida, 1956.

Antoni Abad

He began his career as a sculptor and, over time, evolved toward video art and later into net.art and other forms of new media.

Antoni Abad’s work has evolved from a traditional sculptural practice toward the use of new technologies and, in particular, the creation of community-based artworks using mobile phones. He also moved from photography to video art, followed by an interest in computing and net.art. He uses the Internet as a creative tool and a research platform. His work expresses a desire for formal experimentation around the concepts of space and time—always present in his practice—and more recently includes certain ironic and critical aspects.

He has presented his work at the Fundació Joan Miró, the Museu d’Art Jaume Morera, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, the Venice Biennale, P.S.1. – MoMA, the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, MACBA, among others.

He received the Medalla Morera Plastic Arts Prize (medal) in 1990, the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize in the Multimedia category (2002), the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica in the Virtual Communities category in 2006—considered one of the most important awards worldwide in art and new technologies—and the National Prize for Visual Arts in 2006 awarded by the Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya).

His work is held in the following collections: Artium, CGAC, Centre d’Art La Panera, Col·lecció d’art contemporani de Lleida, Colección Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, Colección Sanitas, Fundació “la Caixa”, Fundación ARCO, Fundación LaCaixa, Fundación Suñol, Fundación Unión Fenosa, Generalitat de Catalunya, Grupo Endesa, Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn & Taxis (Bregenz), MACBA, Marugame Hirai Museum (Marugame, Japan), MUSAC, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museu d’Art Jaume Morera, Museo de Bellas Artes de Murcia, Museo Morera, Museo de Teruel, Museo Pablo Gargallo, Museu de Granollers, and the Pinault Collection.

Work in the collection: Ego (1999), Spanglish
https://catalogo.artium.eus/artistas/antoni-abad
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Abad_Roses

Ego - Spanglish, 1999

Ego is a computer-generated projection that uses drawing software, enabling the computer to generate swarms of houseflies that buzz and move through the space in random patterns.

Every few minutes, several dozen flies gradually gather to spell out a single word in English or Spanish: "I", "Me", "Yo", or some variant of the first person singular. As soon as the word becomes legible, the flies disperse and scatter to the farthest edges of the projection wall before assembling again.

This work was presented in 2001 at the New Museum of New York.

With the support of:

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https://archive.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/364

REALtime, 2021

In REALtime, Antoni Abad created a clock using an international system of signs that shows the variety and complexity of linguistic registers and, at the same time, the (im)possibility of translating the real dimension of time.