Exhibitions
Pause: Camping or Camp
Dani Montlleó
Curated by Mercè Alsina
BARCELONA
Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona
Plaça Pons i Clerch, 2, 2a planta
From October 23, 2025, to January 11, 2026
Hours
From Monday to Saturday, from 10 am to 7 pm. Sundays and public holidays, from 10 am to 2 pm.
Closed on December 25, January 1 and 6.
Exceptional period from November 3 to 17, during which visits will only be possible from Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 7 pm.
Through this project, the artist Dani Montlleó invites us to reflect on the similarities and contrasts between different spaces that society turns to when it needs a pause—a temporal fissure in the fast-paced rhythm of daily life. Both the campsite and the leisure camp can function as vital interregnums: suspended spaces where rest and introspection become possible. However, they propose radically different models of interaction. The camp is organized around the group: everything is designed to foster a cohesive, supposedly egalitarian community, where constant interaction is the norm. In contrast, the campsite emphasizes individual autonomy, minimizing contact with others. Both spaces, in their apparent simplicity, reveal opposing ways of understanding how we inhabit time and space during moments of pause.
Dani Montlleó
Dani Montlleó (Mataró, 1966) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers on the construction of identity through dialogue between cultural, historical, and personal references. His work combines elements from architecture, music, fashion, and industry with a critical and poetic approach to objects, fetishism, and popular culture. Drawing on real or imagined characters and recontextualized historical moments, he builds narratives that navigate between fiction and reality, exploring concepts such as domestic utopia, standardization, nostalgia, and comfort.
With a solid career since the 1990s, Montlleó has presented his work in venues such as Can Palauet, La Capella, Arts Santa Mònica, La Casa Encendida, the Grand Palais, and Laboratorio de Arte Alameda. He is the founder of ACM and projects such as LACOSA and Subcutanspoon.
Panoràmic File
Panoràmic File is a section of the festival curated by Mercè Alsina, which invites artists to develop new projects based on various photographic archives. This year, they were asked to work in response to the edition’s theme: Break. A new visual order, which reflects on the first quarter of the 21st century and the profound geopolitical, technological, and governance shifts that have taken place.
The term break refers both to the idea of rupture and to that of pause —a necessary pause to process these changes and question whether this is truly the future we had envisioned, doing so through the image.
In this edition, seven artists delve into different archives to explore the concept of pause in devices where this temporal suspension is, in some way, inherent.
The projects featured in Panoràmic File 2025 are:
- 3 Tesel·lacions, Erick Beltrán. Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona.
- Tot el que pot passar: La inactivitat com a motor de l’inaudit, Laura Aranda Lavado. Roca Umbert Fàbrica de les Arts, Granollers (amb la col·laboració de l’Arxiu Municipal de Granollers).
- Pausa, Camping o Campament, Dani Montlleó. Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona.
- Habitar el co_lapse, Irene Pe. Arxiu Tobella.
- Capsa 23, Aleix Plademunt. Arxiu Fotogràfic del Consorci de les Drassanes Reials del Museu Marítim de Barcelona.
- Hold on, Laia Solé. Arxiu Fotogràfic del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya.
- Sobre el descans, Natalia Lazaro Prevost. Arxiu d’Etnografia i Folklore de Catalunya.
Mercè Alsina
Mercè Alsina (Barcelona, 1966) holds a PhD cum laude in Art History. She is an independent curator and journalist. Her research has addressed issues such as the impact of globality on artistic productions and their circulation; questions of identity and historical representation; speculative materialism and the nature of objects; the video essay as a practice of resistance; critical photography and the representation of violence; and the relationship between writing and art, among others.
Since 2020, she has been part of the curatorial team of the Panoràmic Festival. She is the author of the essay Massacre (2025). In 2024, she received the ACCA Award for Best Contemporary Art Exhibition Programme in Catalonia, granted by the Catalan Association of Art Critics, for the programming of the cycle santcorneliarts(2) in Cardedeu, which she has directed together with the artist Enric Maurí since 2017.
