Galerie ilegitime 9

This painting brings together three conceptual references: Robert Filliou’s «Galerie légitime», hashtags as used in social media, and the term «FIG», employed by Marcel Broodthaers. The «Galerie légitime», conceived as a portable gallery within a hat, proposed a radical form of artistic self-institutionalization, displacing the notion of the museum onto the artist’s own body. Hashtags, introduced here into the traditionally analog medium of oil painting, establish an ambivalent relationship between the mass circulation of digital information and the conventions of pictorial tradition. Finally, «FIG»—short for «figure», followed by numerals as commonly found in the captions of illustrated publications—was used by Broodthaers to transpose editorial codes into the visual field, constructing a fictional museum that fuses textual narration with institutional scenography.

The work situates itself within a genealogy of artists who created their own museums as poetic and political gestures: Marcel Duchamp with his «Boîte‑en‑valise» (1936–1941), Robert Filliou with the «Galerie légitime» (1962–1963), and Marcel Broodthaers with his «Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles» (1968–1972). In this lineage, I founded the Davis Museum in 2009—a contemporary art museum symbolically created inside a ballot box and disseminated through social media. Officially recognized by the Government of Catalonia, it operates as a ready-made sculpture, digital archive, and nonprofit collective art project. «The Paintings Section From Davis Museum Barcelona»—the only section offering works for sale—consists of portraits and still lifes that pay tribute to these artists and their institutional inventions.

I work in oil on linen for its historical resonance and material richness, using Old Holland paints and Talens mediums. The square format reflects the cubic structure of the museum, while the palette of blue and white evokes its visual identity.