Exhibitions
When chance takes the helm
And, suddenly, chance brings to the Ripollet Cultural Center a look at uncertainty, fate and chance based on the MACBA Collection.
It is in this unpredictable territory that And, suddenly, chance is located. Uncertainties, destinies and coincidences in the MACBA Collection , a traveling exhibition of the Visual Arts Program of the Barcelona Provincial Council that arrives at the Ripollet Cultural Center after having passed through Manresa, Martorell and Terrassa.
Curated by Claudia Elies and organized with the collaboration of the MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and the municipalities that form part of the tour, the exhibition uses a selection of works from the MACBA Collection to address a question that is as everyday as it is difficult to define: to what extent do we control what happens to us? The works of twelve artists, Catalan and international and belonging to different generations, build a tour that does not seek to provide closed answers, but rather to open spaces of doubt around that which escapes our will.
Chance appears articulated from three concepts that, despite being closely related, describe different experiences: uncertainty, fate and chance. Three ways of trying to understand a reality in which we often do not have all the data nor can we foresee the consequences of our actions. The exhibition thus poses the unpredictable not as an exception, but as a permanent force that conditions our way of inhabiting the world.
Water becomes one of the recurring metaphors of the project. As a surface that never remains exactly the same, or as a current that forces us to constantly modify our trajectory, water allows us to think about an existence subject to movement and forces that we cannot always control. Navigating implies assuming that the course can change, and this image runs through many of the questions raised by the exhibition.
In the words of the curator, And, suddenly, chance opens cracks to imagine other stories and recognize that we often do not have the rudder. We live, think and suffer while moving between what we can decide and what simply happens. Art becomes, in this context, a tool to observe these areas of uncertainty and to give shape to experiences that can hardly be reduced to a single explanation.
The project also incorporates a particularly significant participatory dimension. For the first time within the Visual Arts Programme of the Barcelona Provincial Council, one of the travelling exhibitions includes a participatory creation project directly linked to its contents. It is And, suddenly, water , conceived by the artist and scientist Pep Vidal with the mediation of the A Bao A Qu association. The proposal extends the exhibition beyond the works present in the room and introduces a shared creation experience around water and its multiple readings.
In Ripollet, the exhibition can be visited from September 12 to November 8, with the opening scheduled for Tuesday, September 15, at 7 p.m., and a guided tour by Claudia Elies. The project will then maintain its itinerant nature and continue its journey through six more municipalities in the Barcelona area.
The next stop will be Badalona, where it will arrive at the Josep Uclés Hall of the El Carme Cultural Center from November 19, 2026 to January 17, 2027. It will then travel to the Sala dels Trinitaris in Vilafranca del Penedès, from January 29 to March 29, 2027; to the La Sala Contemporary Art Center in Vilanova i la Geltrú, from April 9 to June 13; to the Joan Triadú Cultural Center in Vic, from July 1 to September 5; to the Granollers Museum, from September 17 to November 7; and finally to the Mataró Museum, from November 18, 2027 to January 23, 2028.
With this itinerancy, And, suddenly, chance puts part of the MACBA Collection into circulation and brings contemporary art closer to different territorial contexts, but it also turns each new destination into an opportunity to activate the same question from different places. Because chance is not only what interrupts our plans: it is also what forces us to look in a different way.
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