Dennis Hollingsworth

Barcelona Report

For this first foray into Barcelona, here?s the skinny:

Everything?s closed. Just the Museum and most of the galleries. But abundance did favor me however. I stumbled into a gallery near the museum that was resusitating (sp?) the career of a.. er painter (??) who died int the mid seventies unkown, and who knows, pennyless. His stuff (aluminum and gold foil in stripe patterns) looks like it might have been done by a hip twenty something today. I note the Steve Balkinol and ersatz photowork in the backroom, so i ask the girl behind the desk in fractured Spanish about the scene. It turns out whe went to art school in Miami, so she delvered an analysis in English and sold me a guide book ("Curator") and I was off to the races.

First, I tried to check out the local state run school called "Massema", but no luck. I turned into a courtyard that was a mix of civillians and urban warriors, and the riff raff were thicker the deeper I went with people sleeping in stairs and doorways. U-Turn (chickenshit that I am).

I got lunch and plot the rest of the day: I figured I only had the time to find an art store and see the galleries at Carrer Consell. Not knowing where to go (I wanted to ask the art students where they shop), I went to the one I knew of at C/ Ferrar in the old City. The boutique thing is freaking me out: little tiny bath oil sized bottles of mat resin (I need gallons) at perfume prices... so I buy cheapo bottles of transparent latex to experiment with later. There?s an art store in Girona that I?ll have to see if they have what I need. Teh ramifications of this: I will have to find the right way to build my supports for the work, it looks like I can?t make them in same way as I did back in the states.

Gotta go, my gallery dealer in Tokyo is in town and he lost my number, so he left his in this blog. It looks like we might hook up after all! Cool.

Oh yea, I hooked up with an internet provider this morning. The first try was a no go, they couldn?t handle Macintosh. The experience communicating over teh telephone was a bear, after three operators, I found one who was charitable enough (one told me to find someone who could speak Spanish and hung up on me) to make it happen for us.

More later.