12 October 2015

Exhibtion at Museo Reina Sofía: Constant, New Babylon

The clock is quickly ticking towards the opening of the largest New Babylon exhibition EVER! 150 works by Constant from all over the world will be shown at the Reina Sofía from October 21 2015 till February 29, 2016. Also two spectacular reconstructions will be show: “Paars blauwe kamer” by Aldo van Eyck and Lucebert in 1952 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Constant’s “Deurenlabyrint” that he presented in 1974 in Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Last week our works arrived in Madrid with our courier and and restorer Janine van Reekum. With eight days to go till the grand opening, we are getting extremely excited looking at these photo’s. Tic tac tic tac…

Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía
Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía
Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía
Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía
Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía

Constant, New Babylon

I am not a designer, just a mere provocateur. I confine myself to making suggestions. What has been defined is the concept of New Babylon, not its physical form.

For almost twenty years, Constant (Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys, Amsterdam, 1920 – Utrecht, 2005) realised scale models, paintings, drawings and collages displaying his concept of a nomad city of the future – New Babylon – a complex and expansive labyrinth that transformed the whole world into one sole network. The earth would be collective property, work would be completely automated and run by robots and people would have the freedom to devote their time to creative play.

With this exhibition, which will bring together 150 works and large amounts of documentary material, the Museo Reina Sofía and Kunstmuseum Den Haag aim to bring a wide audience closer to Constant’s project, which has sparked the growing interest of artists, architects and curators in recent years. The cornerstone of the show is New Babylon as a “work of art” inside the social context of its conception, whereby drawings, collages, models, paintings and prints are complemented with a series of reconstructions, fragments of historical films and archive materials.

Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía
Preparations for the exhibition Constant, New Babylon at Museo Reina Sofía

However, the exhibition is not solely circumscribed by the period between 1956 and 1974, the years New Babylon is usually classified within. It also encompasses other phases as it aims to demonstrate that the ideas expressed in the New Babylon project were already present in Constant’s work. Although they were formulated with less clarity – from a period some time before, when he was a member of the CoBrA group between 1948 and 1951 – they did not disappear altogether after 1974. A section will also be devoted to the influence in Constant’s work of a widespread cultural imaginary (gypsy, flamenco and lumpen aspects), which could be identified with Spanish culture.

Organized by: Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Curatorship: Laura Stamps and Doede Hardeman
Artists: Constant (Constant Nieuwenhuys)

In collaboration with: Fondation Constant and RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History
Supported by: Mondriaan Fund and The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands