Exhibitions
The Reina Sofía Museum opens 'Unique Piece' with Thomas Hirschhorn
The Reina Sofía Museum presents Unique Piece , a new temporary exhibition format that allows visitors to discover works from its collections outside the permanent exhibition. This project seeks to highlight the richness of the public collection, emphasizing both contemporary art and the supporting cultures that underpin it.
The first work to star in this initiative is the installation Art Center 6 (Blow Down) (2001), by the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, recently incorporated into the museum's holdings thanks to the donation of the Meana Larrucea Collection.
The Meana Larrucea Collection, founded by lawyer Fernando Meana (Bilbao, 1934 – Madrid, 2020) and his wife María Victoria Larrucea, comprises over five hundred works by prominent contemporary artists, such as Juan Muñoz, Cristina Iglesias, Cildo Meireles, Cindy Sherman, and Miquel Barceló. The addition of Hirschhorn's work reinforces the critical and experimental nature of this private collection.
Thomas Hirschhorn is a leading figure in institutional critique, a movement that emerged in the 1980s questioning the workings of the art system, the power structure of museums, and the way in which economic value is generated around artworks. Art Center 6 is part of a series of installations in which Hirschhorn represents contemporary art institutions as if they were dollhouses, offering a simultaneously playful and critical perspective on the museum world.
Her work is characterized by the use of everyday, humble materials, such as cardboard, tape, photographs, and cutouts, with which she constructs dense and immersive installations. Many of her works reflect themes such as social inequality, consumerism, and the relationship between art and power.
