Moco Museum, Barcelona.
Seen as Barcelona's trendiest Museum, the Moco features contemporary art, street art, immersive installations and photography. It opened in 2021. This is just a very small selection of what was on offer.
Keith Haring, Dog & Snamke Human Large, 1980, (white chalk on black paper)
A confrontation: serpent-headed figures with mouths open and forked tongues face off against barking dogs, which roar back in defiance. This symbol-charged battleground evokes both ancient myths and modern fears: the snakes recall classical iconography, embodying the dual forces of healing and harm, wisdom and danger, while suggesting the unpredictability of life and death. The dogs, recurring figures throughout Haring's compositions, act as agents of protest, barking against authority and political control.
Here, Haring represents conflict through visual symbols adapted from ancient mythology and the urban language of 1980s street culture, all reinterpreted to reflect the tensions of his own time, from social inequality to the uncertainty of the late Cold War period.
This work is part of Haring's Subway Drawings, executed deep down in the subway tunnels of New York City, drawings made with a single, bold uninterrupted line. These Subway Drawings record the artist's flow and quick way of working. Now, they are considered to be his purest creations. Although these drawings only ever remained in place for two days to two weeks, it was important for Haring to connect with his audience during the morning commute. Advertising space in the metro was limited and always changing. These authentic works have rarely survived, but this one has.
When Murakami invented the term Superflat in 2001, he launched on of postmodern art's most exciting and refreshing art movements. Influenced by the Post WWII manga and anime craze, Superflat' references both the two-dimensional quality of traditional Japanese painting and the shallow qualities of consumer culture. As much as this piece appears super-flat, the artist lays out a visual explosion where supreme god-like animals rule and feast on wild colour.
This work is part of Hirst's The Virtues series, inspired by the Eight Virtues of Bushido, the ethical code of the samurai based on principles such as justice, mercy and loyalty, among others. Politeness, one of these virtues, is here translated into visual form.
Robin Kid (a.k.a. The Kid), Destroy me, 2019, (oil and egg tempera on canvas)
Drawing from the world of advertising, the Internet, television and imagery from the past and present, these works question our polarised world of the 21st century and the thin frontier between innocence and corruption confronting today's youth.
Dali reinterprets Marilyn Monroe into a composition of visual distortions, creating a dialogue berween celebrity, perception, and the materiality of art. In the 1970s, he experimented with new media and sculptural techniques, seeking ways to expand visual possibilities and challenge traditional portraiture.
In this work Dali blends Surrealist language with the formal experimentation that defined his later career. By fracturing Monroe's features, including her lips and eyes, into a series of flating forms and magnified contours, he reduces her to her most emblematic traits, reflecting society's tendency to focus on surface appearances while overlooking the complexity of the individual. Does this image reveal Monroe herself, or just the projection of her image that the world sees?
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin (White), 1992, (screeprint)
Kaws, Watching, 2022, (cast silicon bronze and acrylic polyurethane sign paint)
Kaws, Man's Best Friend Sofa
