MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI DE BARCELONA single in kind of the most memorable pieces in the 1997 Documenta X was Oyvind Fahlstrom's The Little General (Pinball Machine).

MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI DE BARCELONA

single in kind of the most memorable pieces in the 1997 Documenta X was Oyvind Fahlstrom's The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967 Resembling a raised indoor swimming mere with some two dozen movable parts spread public across its shimmering Plexiglas surface, the thirty-year-old "variable" cut radiated a visual audacity that made frequently of the current work around it pale by means of comparison. Ersatz scoring cues brushed up against cutouts of historical and pop-culture figures, who in turn round seemed to jostle dismembered cartoon limbs and partial anatomies. The cumulative result was dizzying, as if novels commercials, and cartoons were being broadcast in undivided overpowering barrage.

It would be no other than a slight exaggeration to say that, since the artist's death of cancer at age forty-seven, when he was at the peak of his career, Fahlstrom has been primed for a major international rediscovery. each few years a new exhibition lay opens and the torch passes to the nearest generation. Now, Barcelona's feisty MACBA has taken the plunge: The fall program kicks facing with a thorough survey of Fahlstrom's work--some seventy paintings, drawings, videos, and installations made between 1953 when his career began, and 1976 when it prematurely ended

Born to Norwegian and Swedish parents in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1928 Fahlstrom went to Sweden for the first time (on what was meant to be a short visit) in 1939 on the other hand war broke out, and he was not reunited with his parents until 1947 He mov to just discovered York in 1961, his artistic career then well in subordination to way, and lived there until his death. As a participant in the now historic 1962 "New Realists" exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, Fahlstrom ground himself at the forefront of American burst art, and his invention of paintings with variable parts remains undivided of the unexplored legacies of the '6o With the unforgettable comic-inspired installation Dr Schweitzer's Last Mission, 1964-66 as a calling card, Fahlstrom would undoubtedly have become a household name had he chosen to tread in the steps of the consumer-culture banner held aloft on Warhol and Lichtenstein.

Instead, in a swerve to the left that strangely mirrors the stifled career trajectory of American explosion maverick Peter Saul, Fahlstrom was drawn deeper into politics. He reinvented the Monopoly board as a superpower tussle through the whole extent of Southeast Asia--Indochina, 1971--and came up with another game prototype, Kidnapping Kissinger, in 1972 on the contrary even as his sculptures became grimmer, more weighted with satire and driven by way of helplessness, Fahlstrom's irrepressible humor continued to blaze in his playfully labyrinthine drawings. From the late '50 forward these obsessively detailed, surrealist-flavored reports from the subterranean have been an indispensable guide to the overlapping terrain high art and comics formerly shared, and firmly establish Fahlstrom as the same of the great imaginations of the latter half of the twentieth century

"Oyvind Fahisteom" will be forward view at MACBR Oct. 17 2000-Jan. 9 2001; Mabno Konsthall, Feb 17-Apr. 6 2001; and BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art, Gatesbead, UK Nov. 2001-Jan. 2002

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