Overture. Beyond the Maps

Opening. Beyond the Maps is the title of the first exhibition of the Michael Jenkins and Javier Romero Collection at MACA. It includes forty-nine artists from different generations and nationalities from among the one hundred sixty-two that make up the collection, with works spanning from the late sixties to the present day, seeking a balance between historical figures or artists with long careers and younger artists. 

Opening because it initiates and serves as an introduction to a more extensive collection that seeks to eliminate not only geographical hierarchies, but also hierarchies of disciplines and artistic media, generational boundaries, gender or identity, individual or group work, or hierarchies that could be applied to the diversity of formal or conceptual approaches in art to offer a vision that goes beyond maps, beyond any kind of preestablished and hermetic artistic boundary. Opening our perspective.

The proposed selection reflects the variety of themes and narratives that artists have been exploring in the social and political context, in order to stimulate critical thinking and offer a clearer and more faithful image of reality. We also wanted to highlight the high presence of women artists in the collection and they constitute half of the artists included in this presentation. We have also selected several artists of color from the notable group whose works are represented in the collection. Finally, it was important to highlight the presence of artists from Alicante, for which we have included the work of ten of them in order to create a reading that, aspiring to the global, understands the local, the closest, as fundamental.

Thus, trying to eliminate chronological and territorial boundaries, we propose that in this first installation artists from different generations and geographical contexts coexist and that cross-dialogues be constructed between the selected works. Let this serve as an introduction.