Exhibitions
Álvaro Perdices brings his unusual worlds to La Virreina
This is an anthological exhibition dedicated to the Madrid artist, which covers the most significant stages of his career and can be visited until September 28.
The exhibition Cultivating the Strange , by artist Álvaro Perdices, presents an anthological review of his creative career, offering the public a complete vision of his work from the first half of the 1990s to the present day, in 2022. The exhibition includes both emblematic works that have marked the artist's journey and pieces conceived especially for La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, as well as previously exhibited installations that have been updated and reinterpreted for this occasion. With this exhibition, Perdices invites viewers to explore his formal and conceptual research, highlighting the capacity of his work to transform the familiar into the strange and provoke new readings of reality.
Curated by Valetín Roma, this temporary exhibition will be open until September 28 with work by Álvaro Perdices (Madrid, 1971) where he creates from an important reflection on the history of recent Spain with themes such as memory, aesthetic ruin or the transformation of cultural heritage. His practice, which moves between photography, installation, video and architecture, is characterized by his ability to transform political and social issues into images loaded with critical force and poetic sensitivity, inviting the viewer to look beyond what seems obvious.
In the exhibition Cultivating the Strange at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona in 2025, Perdices presents a selection of projects spanning from the 1990s to the present day, including works created specifically for this space.
Cultivating the strange alludes to multiple meanings. Cultivation refers both to what needs to be nourished in order to grow—be it a field, an ideology, or oneself—as well as to the landscapes and peripheral botany present in Perdices' work, and is also a gesture of homage to the book Cultivos (2008) by Julián Rodríguez, a key figure in his career. For its part, the "strange" evokes queer and uncanny elements, drawing inspiration from references such as Mike Kelley, and indicates the search for indecipherable zones that destabilize the norm and transform the usual into something unexpected and provocative.
Álvaro Perdices has been a pioneer in exploring the tension between human action and nature's response, which often acts as a warning of the dangers of progress through ecological anarchy. Over thirty years ago, he also became interested in free education, experimenting with collaborations with children in the midst of their formative stage and with the tools they themselves could create as an alternative to coercive pedagogical models.
Until the end of September, La Virreina focuses on artists such as Sergi Aguilar, Álvaro Perdices, Cathy Berberian and Eugenia Barba & Odin Teatret. Already in the penultimate month of 2025, the center will host a new wave of exhibitions: The return of the gaze. The political task of telling by Paloma Polo, curated by Mabel Tapia; exhibitions dedicated to Michelangelo Antonioni and Luigi Ghirri, curated by Frederic Montornès; Trinh T. Minh-Ha, with the tandem of curators Manuel Borja-Villel and Valentín Roma; and finally Expaña 365 by Isaías Griñolo, curated by Valentín Roma.
