That time

Tabakalera and The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum present the joint exhibition That Time. The Ages of Art. Tabakalera-Bilbao Museoa. This is the first time that both institutions have collaborated on an exhibition project, which will be made up of a significant part of the Bilbao museum's collection and will be complemented with newly created works produced by Tabakalera and created expressly for this exhibition.

The exhibition, which will open in June 2023 and can be visited until December of the same year, during the extension works of the Bilbao museum, will include more than 60 works, including several pieces considered masterpieces. The works will travel from Bilbao to San Sebastian, from the collection of a museum to a contemporary creation centre, in a journey in reverse to the usual one.

This is the largest exhibition show at Tabakalera since it opened in 2015, and will have 1,500 m2 of exhibition space, extending the usual exhibition space by more than 500 square metres and generating a circular route along the first floor.

That time. The Ages of Art is based on the text "That Time", a one-act play by novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett, written in English between 8 June 1974 and August 1975, and translated into Spanish as "Aquella vez". The play contains three voices which, in turn, refer to three temporalities. These voices would have the virtue of placing the spectator before three aspects of time that are easily conjugated with the idea of the present: the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future. 

Beckett's idea of cyclical time coincides with the critique of the linear time of positivism, largely taken up by art historiography in its contemporary remastered and rebranded versions. In this sense, the exhibition That Time proposes that the visitor can enjoy a multiplicity of works that contribute to a better understanding of the temporal leaps, interruptions and crossings that take place within the framework of a temporality that in no case could be described as a unidirectional advance. Along the same lines, the space that will host the exhibition will reinforce the idea of the circularity of time in the experience of visiting the exhibition.

This exhibition will be curated by the internal team of both institutions: Miriam Alzuri, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, on behalf of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, and Oier Etxeberria, Head of the Public Programme, on behalf of the Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture.

The opening will take place in June 2023 and the exhibition will be open to the public for six months. It will also feature an extensive programme of activities that will include visits and conferences that will focus on the idea of time and the history of art.