It is a rare occasion that i can offer a catalogue on Francesc Abad. The Spanish conceptual artist who at one time of his artistic career visited the Hague and where an exhibition at HCAK took place.. The project ABOUT CHAOS, was realised in Den Haag in 1992 and with this project a small but important book was published which is now available at http://www.ftn-books.com
The works of multidisciplinary artist Francesc Abad have always turned around a concern with the fragility of memory (individual and collective) and its recovery, and with manifesting how history is reconstructed and manipulated by each present. Using objects, audiovisuals, montages, photographs, installations, etc., Abad reconciles art and thought, often highlighting their contradictions, by recovering the words and texts of thinkers, writers and poets such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Paul Celan and Primo Levi.
Outstanding among his most recent work is El Camp de la Bota, which takes its title from the site of execution of 1704 people by the Francoist dictatorship between 1939 and 1952, which was recently covered over and is now concealed by building for the Forum of Cultures. This work was awarded the 2004 City of Barcelona Visual Arts Prize.
