ROBERT BARRY INAUGURATES PARKING, A NEW CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECT IN THE PUBLIC SPACE OF BARCELONA.

Parking is a new contemporary art project in Barcelona. It is a showcase located at the entrance of a car park, which will be periodically intervened by contemporary artists. Parking will be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The programming of this new space is in charge of Moishan Gaspar, former director of the Fundació Gaspar.

The first artist invited to intervene in the space is Robert Barry, who presents ‘The Real Thing…’, a new work conceived especially for Parking. This exhibition has been curated by Mathieu Copeland, in anticipation of the launch of ‘Robert Barry, The Defining Of It…’, the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to the American artist, edited by Mathieu Copeland himself and to be published in 2025 by Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König incollaboration with the Leeds School of Art – Leeds Beckett University.

Robert Barry (1936, United States) is one of the foremost figures of Minimalism and one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art. A graduate of Hunter College in New York, Barry is primarily known for his use of language in his works. From the beginning of his career he has been interested in physical phenomena such as electromagnetic fields or ultrasound frequencies, as well as intangible concepts such as emptiness or silence. It is the spectator and his or her reaction to the words suggested by Barry that completes and gives meaning to the work.

Robert Barry’s works are part of the permanent collection of numerous museums around the world, including: MoMA, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – Smithsonian Institute; Washington D.C.; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.