BARCELONA.- Oriol Vilanova opens the cycle Preventive Archaeology at Espai 13, Fundació Joan Miró, with the recreation of two historical constructions in Montjuïc, the Poble Espanyol and the German Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe.

From 18 September to 8 December 2013, Vilanova presents She Corrects Manners Laughingly, his vision of collective memory through the juxtaposition of two symbolic historical projects built for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. On the one hand, the Poble Espanyol as a sum of architectural recreations that reorders the Spanish imaginary and links it to folklore; on the other, the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion as a referent of modernity.

The exhibition opens the cycle Preventive Archaeology, curated by Oriol Fontdevila, as part of the activities for the commemoration of the 1714 Tercentenary. Included in the 2013–14 season will be four artistic projects by Oriol Vilanova, Lúa Coderch, Lola Lasurt and Antonio Gagliano, which offer a re-reading of collective memory by putting forward different ways of explaining history through the point of view of the present. As in any topographic work prior to an excavation, the programme tries to follow the legacy and the elements that, having survived to this day, relate us to the past.

She Corrects Manners Laughingly, a title borrowed from Francis Picabia, divides the exhibition space by a transversal wall. Entreacte (Interval) is a large red piece placed in the middle, in the manner of a theatre curtain, to create two symmetric ‘scenarios’ leading to the key piece in the exhibition, entitled Malgrat tot (In spite of).

Malgrat tot is a photographic series in which Oriol Vilanova has re-photographed the Poble Espanyol and the German Pavilion in the format of the postcards and images published in 1929. The artist has photographed both spaces at night, a moment when their meaning is hidden in the dark.

The piece Detesto el folklore oficial y organizado (I Detest Official and Organised Folklore) unites in the same photograph the two spaces represented in the gallery. The image shows a glass table, designed by Mies van der Rohe, as a support for a series of blown glass recipients made in the Poble Espanyol. Traditional objects and modernity together in one image. The title of the work is borrowed from a declaration by Luís Buñuel in the early twentieth century.

As a soundtrack and underlining the theatrical effect, we can hear Oriol Vilanova himself whistling the melody of Mon Oncle (1958) by Jacques Tati, a film that satirises modern constructions and automatisms.