Boîte-hors-de-valise 3

Davis Lisboa, Boîte-hors-de-valise 3, 2017. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in).

The work is situated within The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, a section that operates as an extension of a museum conceived simultaneously as a readymade, digital archive, and collective project, recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya. In this context, the painting does not simply represent; it functions as an active element within a system where image, institution, and circulation intersect.

Drawing from Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise—understood as a portable museum—the painting develops the notion of a museological archive linked to a lineage of artists who have conceived their own institutional frameworks. This trajectory unfolds through references to Duchamp, Robert Filliou, and Marcel Broodthaers, whose practices redefine the museum as both form and strategy.

The section is structured along two complementary axes: portraits of these artists and still lifes that reference their key works—the Boîte-en-valise, the Galerie légitime, and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. Within this dual structure, the painting articulates a precise reflection on exhibition systems, authorship, and their displacements within the field of art.

Formally, the image adopts a blurred quality akin to the strategies of Gerhard Richter, where representation is experienced as mediation. The use of oil on linen, the square format, and the blue monochrome follow a rigorous internal logic, positioning the work as a coherent fragment within a larger system.