No visit to Madrid is complete without an afternoon spent at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Spain’s premier museum of 20th-century art. The museum’s current exhibitions address how images and media shape contemporary experience, offering visitors a range of works in painting, photography, film and video.
On view through March 27, Ignasi Aballí: Without Beginning/Without End explores the proliferation of images in modern life. Aballí’s presentation brings together diverse formats to consider how visual material accumulates, repeats and interacts with language. The exhibition prompts reflection on the volume of images that surround us, how they gain or lose meaning, and how written text can alter the way images are perceived.
Complementing this, Portuguese artist Alexandre Estrela’s Pockets of Silence uses film and video to investigate the spectator’s relationship with images. Estrela probes how moving images affect viewers and emphasizes the quiet, still intervals that separate frames. The work invites contemplation of the pauses and silences that structure cinematic perception and the emotional and cognitive effects they produce.
Also on display through March 21, Hito Steyerl: Duty-Free Art examines the influence of the internet and digital technologies on contemporary life. Steyerl employs video narration—often with a touch of irony—to tackle subjects such as communication processes, systems of control and surveillance, cultural globalization, migration and the militarization of information. The pieces combine critical inquiry with accessible storytelling to engage visitors on pressing social and political themes.
Altogether, these exhibitions at the Reina Sofía present a thoughtful survey of how images, text and technology intersect in the 21st century, making the museum an essential stop for anyone interested in contemporary visual culture.