Introduction

Teresa Solar Abboud’s solo exhibition at MACBA traverses the artist’s trajectory with works that highlight the sculptural spectrum of her work. Opening to the public on 21 November, Bird Machine Dream is the second chapter of a three-part project that began at the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo with the title Machine Dream Bird and will end its journey at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo with the title Bird Dream Machine On view at MACBA through 9 March, the exhibition Bird Machine Dream features a selection of the work of Teresa Solar Abboud (Madrid, 1985) curated by Tania Pardo, director of CA2M, and Claudia Segura Campins, head of the MACBA Collection. Solar Abboud arrives to the museum at the peak of her career with an installation of small and large format sculptures, some of them already exhibited at CA2M. At MACBA these are accompanied by drawings, videos, workbooks and photographs. Both the artist and curators intend for the spectator to move beyond the sculptural presence that characterizes Solar’s most recent work in order to access the conceptual and aesthetic paths that have determined her work since its beginnings.

In Bird Machine Dream, the visitor will traverse the exhibition through an immersive imaginary that engages with the museum’s own architecture, a practice that has become a vital characteristic of Solar Abboud’s approach to exhibition-making: ‘When I first visit a space where I will work, I try to understand how it affects me. I think it is likely that my sensations are similar to those of the people who move through and experience that particular space, so I think they create the best bridge to connect with them’, states the artist.

This exhibition offers the opportunity to better understand the work of Solar Abboud. Among the most prominent artists of her generation, she has already exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Liverpool Biennial in addition to other international institutions. In 2022, MACBA acquired two sculptures from her Tunnel Boring Machine series for its collection.

An artistic journey articulated by eighty pieces from different stages

Bird Machine Dream juxtaposes distinct moments from Teresa Solar Abboud’s oeuvre. The journey through the artist’s trajectory covers her early experimentation in video, her first ceramic works and her soft-form attempts with different materials, up to her recent immersive sculptural installations. Also included are drawings and sketchbooks, conceived as artist’s books, that reveal her creative process. 

Combining recent works with early projects, the exhibition reinforces the presence of sculpture with the practice of drawing, understood here as a reflection and articulation of the perception and experience of the origin of each form, as well as the ideas that orbit around them.

Science fiction and ancient art have greatly influenced Solar Abboud’s thought and work, as well as interaction with the artists of her generation in Madrid. The resistance of language and the morphology of speech are two consistent themes of her work that depart from a search for multiple concepts presented as giant sculptural installations. In recent years, her installations have become more complex through forms related to resistance, hollowness, the body and bone structure.

With the use of architectural elements, unusual materials and interactive technology, the artist creates a unique dialogue between the public and the exhibition space, inviting us to question the nature of the places we inhabit and how they impact our emotions and thoughts. 

Solar Abboud articulates a display of forms that recover elements related to the organic world, leading to a constellation of metaphors hinting at the flows of currents and connectivity between orifices and cavities. The exhibition becomes a dialogue between the fictitious and the real, where different narrations in process propose new forms and materialities, contrasting the effects and textures of nature with solid, shiny industrial aesthetics. 

A co-production between CA2M, MACBA and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

The exhibition is the second chapter of the exhibition dedicated to Solar Abboud’s practice that began at CA2M with Machine Dream Bird and will end at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo with the title Bird Dream Machine. Each iteration is conceived as a different approach to the artist’s practice: the three title variations precisely evoke the change and mutation that takes place between each of the museums. The exhibition is understood, then, as a triptych organ that contracts in a first episode, expands in its second presentation at MACBA, and is compressed again in its final presentation.

The project is curated by Tania Pardo, director of CA2M, and Claudia Segura, head of the MACBA Collection, with the collaboration of Irene Calderoni, chief curator of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

A key element of this project is the already available publication co-produced by the three institutions: CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid), MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin). It consists of three separate editions – Spanish, Catalan and English – and includes texts by the curators, Tania Pardo, Claudia Segura Campins and Irene Calderoni, contributions by Chus Martínez and Manuela Moscoso and a conversation between the artist and Cecilia Alemani.