Bogart Cinema. Imagining a Building

Bogart Cinema. Imagining a Building is an exhibition curated by Ines Caballero, representing, through an artistic and documentary language, the architecture and the history of the building of Bogart Cinema. In the autumn of 2013, six artists visited the building, it had been closed since 2001. Each one of the artists documented his visit and now presents the results of their personal interpretations: its places, its architectural symbols, and the stories that happened inside.

The artists participating are: Marlon de Azambuja, Nicolás Combarro, Allard van Hoorn, Javier Peña Ibáñez, Leonor Serrano Rivas and Luis Úrculo. The pieces, especially produced for this exhibition, recreate the memories of their visits, invoke the particularities of its architecture and challenge the visitor to imagine the building. We rescue it from the city’s memory and invite visitors to reflect on the unused spaces around us.

The Bogart Cinema is located in the city centre of Madrid, behind the Congress and a few steps away from Alcalá Street. Its current form is the result of several enlargements and renovations that took place since it was first designed, in 1907, and 1929, when the last one of them took place. Many of the original elements of that renovation still remain.

During its almost 100 years, the building has hosted a cinema, a theatre, a cabaret, a ballroom and even a Spanish frontón exclusively for women.

It has also had multiple names: Salón Madrid, Frontón Madrid, Teatro-Cine Rey Alfonso, Club Picadilly, Club Lido, Cine Panorama, Teatro Arniches, Cine Cedaceros and Bogart Cinema. In short, a direct witness of Madrid’s social and cultural life during the past century.

After more than one decade of dereliction and no plans for the future, its doors will “open” for this exhibition. Art, architecture and memory: urban unused spaces that invite us to reflect on the city, its buildings and their possibilities; on the endless, difficult and vital need of keeping them alive.

In parallel to the exhibition, the digital platform imaginarunedificio.com has been created. It’s centered around an interactive map of Madrid in which visitors will be able to add and document unused buildings in the city. The platform, moderated by the exhibition’s team, seeks to get visitors involved while at the same time creating a valuable documentary registry of unused spaces and buildings in the city.

Date.- 9 May - 12 October.
Venue.- Calle Cedaceros, 7. Madrid. Spain.