Palabras... / Words... The power of words transits between their permanence and their volatility. Sometimes you need a scalpel and others so old and full of meanings that their own wealth makes them ambiguous, poetic, capable of suggesting hells and utopias.

Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 78 years old) has turned some of them into images and presents them at the ARCO fair, as a reflection on their use and the means of communication at the El País newspaper stand.

The artist's work, resident in the United States, continues an investigation into the language that began in New York and was presented in Spain in the Moisés Pérez de Albéniz gallery and in Artium.

Words ... is now presented at ARCO, with an ad hoc installation created by the artist in collaboration with the architect Juan Herreros. Words ... will travel in March and April in a new version of the series to São Paulo, Brazil.
The "fake news" have demonstrated more than ever the value, use and manipulation of words. Networks and new uses of communication, such as written messages, raise an intense reflection on their metalinguistic value. Muntadas has selected a series of words transforming them into images to accentuate a reflection on their semiological value, but especially their metalinguistic, typographical value, their translation, their obvious ontological character, in a process of loss of meanings or gain of others not established so far .

The project was initially presented in the Moisés Pérez de Albéniz gallery (Madrid, 2017) and Artium (Vitoria, 2019), pointing out the widespread wear of language in its classical sense due to its new social uses, especially through the repetitive recourse of certain terms by the political class and the media.

At the invitation of the newspaper El País for ARCOmadrid 2020, Muntadas has proposed a version of the Palabras... project that does take into account contextual conditions. First, the number of words is defined in relation to the exhibition space.

In the list of terms some have been introduced that did not appear so far in the project Words ..., which make direct reference to the media, such as OPINIÓN, OBJETIVIDAD, FAKE NEWS, RESPONSABILIDAD and MEDIA, in addition to POLÍTICA, IDEOLOGÍA, DEMOCRACIA, DEMAGOGIA and MIEDO.

In collaboration with the architect Juan Herreros, a temporary structure has been designed and built to host Palabras..., determining a specific display for the occasion.

The version of Palabras... for El País appropriates the characteristic typography of this newspaper, whose logo is part of the collective imaginary of print media in Spain since its foundation in 1976.

Muntadas has worked pointing out the invisible that, from the macro or microstructures, affects us without us being aware of its existence, as a «landscape landscape mediator dedicated to drawing relationships between things that remained hidden or silent», Fernández-Cañadas, 2017.
Antoni Muntadas was born in Barcelona in 1942 and has lived in New York since 1971. His work addresses social, political and communication issues, such as the relationship between public and private space within certain social frameworks or information channels and the way in which they are used to censor or promulgate ideas. He presents his projects in different media, such as photography, video, publications, Internet, installations and interventions in urban spaces.

Muntadas has taught and directed seminars in various institutions in Europe and the United States, Latin America and Asia. His long career as a visiting professor of the Visual Arts Program at the School of Architecture at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, stands out from 1990 to 2014. He is currently a professor at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice.

He has received various awards and scholarships from institutions such as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Electronic Arts in Linz, Laser d'Or in Locarno, the National Prize for Plastic Arts granted by the Generalitat de Catalunya and the National Prize for Plastic Arts 2005. One of the most recent awards is the Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts 2009, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

His work has been exhibited in several museums, including the MoMA in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum in California, the Musée Contemporain in Montreal, the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. As for its presence in international competitions, it is worth mentioning its participation in the VI and X editions of the Documenta de Kassel (1977, 1997), the Whitney Biennial of American Art (1991) and the 51st Venice Biennial (2005), as well as those of São Paulo, Lyon, Taipei, Gwangju and Havana.
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estudioHerreros. Architecture firm founded in 2014 by Juan Herreros, who transformed Herreros Arquitectos into estudioHerreros. The firm brings together the almost 40-year career of Juan Herreros, accompanied since 2014 by his partner Jens Richter, after serving as Director of the studio after 10 years of collaboration with Juan Herreros.

Established in Madrid, the studio is internationally recognized with awards, publications and exhibitions, and has offices in Madrid, New York and Mexico City, in which 20 architects of various nationalities collaborate. The studio has important achievements in the art world such as the Edward Munch Museum in Oslo currently under construction, the requalification of the exhibition areas of the Reina Sofía Museum, the contemporary art space SOLO in Madrid and a number of designs for art fairs, galleries, exhibitions, or artist studios such as that of Luis Gordillo.

In parallel to its professional practice, the studio's teaching, intellectual and media activities constitute an essential reference due to its connections between architecture, culture, research, art and social sciences.

estudioHerreros operates globally through a strategic positioning and a working method in accordance with a time defined by the complexity of architectural production processes, which nevertheless demand simplicity and efficiency, and the transdisciplinary nature of the agents involved in the project, which makes its well-known motto "Architecture in Dialogue" the basis of its projects around the world.

estudioHerreros' list of significant projects includes the Santiago intermodal station, the Ágora-Bogotá events centre in Colombia and the Tacubaya Strategic Plan in Mexico, along with projects in Spain, Korea, Panama, Uruguay, France, Morocco, etc.

His latest built projects include the Munch Museum and the Trosten Sauna in Oslo, the Ágora-Bogotá events centre, the new MALBA Museum in Escobar, Argentina and the Mistral Urban Complex in Marseille, all of which have won international competitions. Projects under construction include the High Speed ​​Station in Santiago de Compostela, the Adakar Collection of contemporary art space in Bilbao, the new SOLO headquarters in Madrid and the Gulia advanced neighbourhood in Romania. Finally, the series of mixed-programme complexes in the design phase in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Bucharest, Guadalajara (Mexico) and Santo Domingo deserve special mention.

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