“Marcel Broodthaers #9”

This painting takes its conceptual inspiration from a still from Marcel Broodthaers’s experimental film “La Pluie, Projet Pour Un Texte” (1969). On a formal level, it recalls Gerhard Richter’s photographic paintings of the 1960s, in which images drawn from press clippings and family photographs were projected onto canvas and blurred to the point of rendering their subjects unrecognizable. This strategy merges the photographic register with pictorial language, allowing for an exploration of the tension between presence and absence, between what is visible and what has been erased.

The work is also situated within a critical narrative in art history: that of artists who established their own museums as a means of challenging traditional institutions. This lineage is exemplified by Marcel Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-valise” (1936–41), Robert Filliou’s “La galerie légitime” (1962–63), and Marcel Broodthaers’s “Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles” (1968–72). Inspired by this trajectory, I founded the Davis Museum Barcelona in 2009, conceived as a ready-made sculpture, a collaborative artistic project, and a cultural entity officially recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

The Davis Museum was symbolically created inside a ballot box and disseminated primarily through social media, becoming the world’s smallest contemporary art museum. Its Paintings Section comprises portraits and still lifes. The portraits depict Duchamp, Filliou, and Broodthaers, while the still lifes reinterpret their iconic works: “Boîte-en-valise,” “La galerie légitime,” and “Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles.”

I chose oil on linen for its versatility and its rich historical repertoire of images and ideas. Only the finest materials were used: linen canvas, Old Holland oil paints, and Blockx medium. The square format echoes the cube of the Davis Museum, while the use of blue refers to the institution’s corporate color.