Volum! at MACBA: Sound as Artistic Paradigm

The exhibition 'Volum!' at MACBA in Barcelona, running from November 9, 2011, to April 23, 2012, presents works from the merged collections of MACBA and the Fundació Caixa. The show juxtaposes abstract paintings by Lucio Fontana, Antoni Tàpies, and Miquel Barceló with videos by Antoni Muntadas, Bruce Nauman, and Anri Sala, lacking critical apparatus to bridge the transition between visual and sonic works. It traces the historical shift from Kandinsky, Klee, and Kupka's abstraction based on musical models to contemporary pieces where sound is a material component. Key works include Fontana's 'Concetto Spaziale C 59 T 21' (1959), Tàpies' 'Quatre Quadrats grisos sobre fons marró' (1959), Henri Michaux's ink drawing 'Sans titre' (1955), Samuel Beckett's film 'No I, No jo, No yo' (1987), Nauman's 'Shit in your Hat, Head on a Chair' (1990), Anri Sala's '1395 Days without Red' (2011), Muntadas' 'Portrait' (1994), and Pierre Bismuth's 'Postscript/The passenger' (1996-2011). The exhibition argues that sound conveys what cannot be articulated in discourse.