The name of Palacín's project comes from what in film is known as the 180 degree rule and which marks the position of the characters with respect to the camera in order to avoid creating confusion in the spectator. 180° is a response to the loss of the link connecting photography and reality and focuses on a change in the spectator's position with respect to images and their implications. 180° takes as its point of departure a high-definition photograph of an apparently insignificant place and breaks this image down into multiple points of view and multiple micro-narratives that together shape to it. Mabel Palacín's work is not just a reflection on the image in contemporary society - it sets out to offer working foundations on which art may reconstruct a use for images.

This project also envisages a multiple publication in which the different elements that converge in 180° will be included: the enlarged and fragmented image in different formats, multiple copies of a video for private use, textual references, soundtrack, etc. It is a publication that is intended to be at one and the same time a translation of the project, an enlargement in points of reference, a facsimile edition and an artist's book.

The IRL has allocated the executive project of the exhibition a budget of €450,000. 

Mabel Palacín

Born in Barcelona in 1965, she has a degree in Art History and Film, Photography and Video from the University of Barcelona. From the start she has taken photographs, made videos and created installations, interested in both the multiplicity of formats in which an image may be expressed and in its unstable quality. In her work things do not happen directly because the reality is interfered with. Her video work describes a fragmented reality, fractured narratives structured in layers in which the spectator becomes a fundamental piece. The works have an important spatial dimension in which the issue of the scale and the multiple screens call out to the spectator by connecting the image with the architecture. 

In the recent years her work has been shown at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida; the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon; the Museu Empordà in Figueres; the Casino Luxembourg Forum d'art contemporain; the OK Center in Linz; the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica and the MACBA in Barcelona; the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid; the Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis in Bregenz; the Reykjavik Art Museum; the Kunstbunker Tumulka in Munich; the Norwich Gallery; the MUA in Alicante, and the Lothar Albrecht Galerie in Frankfurt.

David G. Torres

Born in Barcelona in 1967, he is an art critic and exhibition curator, as well as a co-director and co-founder of A*DESK, Institut Independent de Crítica i Art Contemporani. He writes as an art critic in El Cultural and has also collaborated with Art Press and Lápiz, as well as publishing articles in Papers d'Art, Lateral, Transversal, Untitled, Circa and in different catalogues and monographs. Since 2008 he has been writing the column "Dada Sight!" for the magazine Bonart.

From 2007 to 2009 he curated the following projects: The Fashion Party Is Over (with Mai Abu ElDahab), at Objectif in Antwerp; Intensities, for the Diputació de Barcelona; No, Future, at the Bloomberg Space in London; and Attitude!! at the Iconoscope in Montpellier. These proposals continue a line of work on the recovery of the radical nature of art begun in 2005 with the project "David G. Torres presenta: Salir a la calle y disparar al azar", an independent happening lasting a few hours in a Barcelona basement.

The selection process

The jury that had to choose the curator for the Catalonia and the Balearic Islands artistic project at the 2011 Venice Art Biennale met for the first time in Barcelona on 29th April. Proposed by the directors of the Institut Ramon Llull, it was made up of seven professionals of renowned international prestige. This committee of experts was chaired by Vicent Todolí, until last June the Director of Tate Modern in London, and on it were Bartomeu Marí, Director of the MACBA; Laurence Rassel, Director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Joan Fontcuberta, artist; Cristina Ros, Director of the Museu Es Baluard; Joan Cortés Servera, artist, and Bestué-Vives, artists invited to the international exhibition of the 2009 Art Biennale.

The period for submitting entries closed on 30th August, with a total of 28 projects received, a third of which came from abroad. From them the jury short-listed 5 finalists whom it interviewed, and finally on Tuesday 28th September it chose David G. Torres's project as the winning proposal for the Catalonia and Balearic Islands pavilion at the 2011 Venice Art Biennale. 

The Institut Ramon Llull took part in the Biennale for the first time in 2009 with the project The Unavowable Community, curated by Valentín Roma, an exhibition that was visited by over 45,000 people.