The artist Adrià Julià presents the exhibition “Fables for an animal economy”, an invitation to rethink value beyond the market – Fundació Joan Brossa

• It opens on Tuesday, November 25 at 6 p.m. at the Liberal Arts Center of the Joan Brossa Foundation and can be seen until January 4, 2026.
• The exhibition links the past and present of the monetary system with the history of the building and with the animals as representations of a contemporary bestiary.
• It is the result of the PostBrossa 2025-2026 call from the Joan Brossa Foundation for the production and exhibition of visual artistic installations of a hybrid nature.

Barcelona, ​​November 21, 2025 – The Free Arts Center of the Joan Brossa Foundation presents Fables for an animal economy, ofAdrian Julianan exhibition resulting from the call PostGarbage 2025-2026 for the production and exhibition of visual art installations of a hybrid nature, which can be seen from November 25, 2025 to January 4, 2026.

The exhibition presents a constellation of works from recent years and new productions by the artist that reflect on the constant transformation of economic value —both in its material dimension and in its meaning. This story links the past and present of the monetary system with the history of the building that houses the exhibition and with the animals as representations of a contemporary bestiary.

Some of the works in the exhibition are activated from performative processes that explore the dematerialization and the abstraction of money —an evolution that continues to exploit nature and alienate a significant part of our society. In this way, Fables for an animal economy it becomes an invitation to rethinking value beyond the market, in a world that seems to have forgotten that life is not measured in money.

A dialogue with the coin factory

The exhibition is presented at the Free Arts Center of the Joan Brossa Foundation, located in La Seca, a heritage building from the 14th century that was the former coin factory of the Crown of Aragon. The set of works presented there dialogue with this past and with the present of the monetary system. The large format installation Fables for an animal economy (2025), which gives the exhibition its name, reproduces an architectural image that contrasts with this historic building: the image of modern, fictional architecture represented on the five hundred euro note.

The installation Economic constellations (2025) groups Paper Currency (Series I, Series II, Series III) (2025) i The Spinning of the Earth (Series I) (the rotation of the earth) (2023), two works that literally use materials historically linked to the production of money and that are currently in a process of obsolescence and marginalization.

A Another Fortuitous Encounter (Another serendipitous find) 2025, a laser printer hanging from the ceiling prints a random sequence of sheets with the image of a US twenty-dollar check from the 1960s, which features an image of a pigeon with its legs tied by the carelessness of the cartoonist who copied the original photograph in detail. The work is about the relationship between analogue photography and cash Analogue photography is like cash (2023-2025), a photographic diptych of a text that the artist presents for the first time in a Catalan version.

Activations of a bestiary

The ephemeral architecture of the work Fables for an animal economy it becomes the stage of the performance RAT. CAT. COLUMBUS (2025), which will be activated with the collaboration of the art historian and journalist Marc Giró giving voice to these three animals. A characterization of the bestiary, as in stories and fables, which will invite reflection on the relationship of money with greed, deception, appearance and social and gender roles.

the artist

Adrian Julian (Barcelona 1974) has developed his work during the last twenty-five years between Los Angeles and Barcelona. Through installations, film, video, photography, performance and publications, Julià examines the means of representation and reception of events with a personal and collective dimension, as well as the ways in which memory, resistance, displacement and survival are negotiated.

Some of the most notable solo exhibitions include “Think of It as Money!” at the Contemporary Art Center of the University of California Irvine (2023); “The conquest of the useless” at La Virreina Center de la Imatge, Barcelona (2021-2022); “A very white flower” at La Panera, Lleida (2021); “Nem mesmo os mortos sobrevivrão” at the São Paulo Pinacoteca Museum (2019-2020); “Hot Iron” at the Miró Foundation in Barcelona (2017); “Hot Iron Marginalia” in Tabakalera, San Sebastián (2017-2018); “Perpetual Monologues a Propos of a Loved Being: Los Angeles 1943-1991” at Dan Gunn Berlin (2015); “Cat on the Shoulder” 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, USA (2013); “Ruinas del Habla” at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); “Utopia, Ohio” within the Barcelona Production program at La Capella, Barcelona (2011); “Notes on the Missing Oh” at Project Art Center, Dublin (2011); “A Means of Passing the Time” at LAXART, Los Angeles, USA (2008).

Among the collective exhibitions in which he has participated, the ones held at the Metropolitan Museum, New York stand out; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Redcat, Los Angeles; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Lyon Biennial, Lyon; Sesc Belenzinho, São Paulo; Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. Aachen; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India; 7th Mercusur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Akademie der Künste, Berlin. He presented performances at the AGO Museum in Toronto, Current LA, the 29th São Paulo Biennial and the Soledad Lorenzo Gallery. Adrià Julià has received grants from the Botín Foundation, American Academy of Berlin, California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, Art Matters, American Center Foundation, Fundació “La Caixa”, and in 2002 the Altadis Award.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Dates:
From November 25, 2025 to January 4, 2026

Opening:
Tuesday, November 25 at 6 p.m

Opening hours to the public:
Tuesday from 4 to 8 p.m., Wednesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

CREDITS

Artist: Adrian Julian
Graphic design: Ariadna Serrahima
Brochure printing: Apograph
Graphic production: EGM Visual Communication
Texts: Adrian Julian
Linguistic advice: CNLB – Old City
Assembly: hangar Center for artistic production and research. Soto creative solutions
Transport: Arterri
Insurance: Casablancas SA

A production of Liberal Arts Center of the Joan Brossa Foundation. With the collaboration of Capellades Paper Mill Museumwithin the framework of the Prototips artistic residencies program, promoted by the PAAC, hangar Center for artistic production and research., J. Vilaseca SA. i GAM Digital SL.

Acknowledgments: Deborah Antscherl, Think (Joan February), Marc Giró, Miguel Angel de Heras, Ibai Jaimez, Ramon Julià, Maria Àngels Marquès, Roger Miralles, John Morey, Ludger Mykina, Pablo Osorno, Santi Pla, Lucia Prancha, Victoria Rabal i Javier Soto.

MORE INFORMATION AND INTERVIEW MANAGEMENT
Diana Juanpere Dunyó
Communication and press
Liberal Arts Center – Joan Brossa Foundation
✉ djuanpere@fundaciojoanbrossa.cat