Just a few days after the opening of 'In Free Fall' (Catalan: 'En caiguda lliure'), Àngels Ribé, the artist who created the exhibition's central piece 'Labyrinth', just happened to win the National Prize of Plastic Arts, awarded by the Ministry of Culture. Curator João Laia's talent, however, goes beyond this coincidence that of course helps boost visits to the exhibition. Taking the structural crisis in which we live as a starting point, Laia has commissioned a space for reflection on ecological, economic, political and social instability.
Ribé's sinuous yellow plastic maze, which was first presented at Verderonne Castle in 1969 and again exhibited at Barcelona's MACBA in 2011, functions as a magnetic field around which 13 works orbit. The works in turn were created between the late 1960s and the present by a total of 11 artists, among them Dar Birnbaum and Dan Graham, Andreas Gursky, Georg Baselitz and Rosemarie Trockel. Ribé's large spiral installation, through which you can watch the disorientated visitors zig and zag (and you can as wel), represents the anguish and discomfort of curatorial discourse and carves out a circular path, conceivably with no beginning or end.
Another standout work is the sound art piece 'Gravitational Waves' ('Ones gravitacionals'), in which creator and poet Eduard Escoffet takes over the audioguide device to put voices and sounds to the works. As a counterpoint to the imposing structure, the sound art helps you to get your bearings and offer possible readings and escape routes. It's a soundtrack to keep you company as you travel along so close to the abyss.