The Future Is Old - Solo Show - Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art - Barcelona, Spain

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Barcelona premieres the first solo exhibition in Spain of contemporary artist ROBIN KID aka THE KID.

Where contemporary art enlightens humanism in the social crisis and democratic decay of our 21st century!

An exhibition that pushes boundaries, wakes up humanity and shakes up the traditional Museum district of Barcelona at the very heart of the city’s historical center. The Museum spotlights International contemporary artist ROBIN KID for a one-of-a-kind thought-provoking solo exhibition in Barcelona from February 8, 2024. The Museum and the Artist himself co-curate ROBIN KID’s first solo show in Spain – The Future is Old, which has been prolonged three times and is still ongoing, given the exhibition’s huge success with the International audience and striking resonance with our most troubled times.

“ROBIN KID : The Future is Old”

Mass shooting / Individualistic indifference / Institutionalized racism / Social determinism / Inequality of Opportunity / Ever-threatened civil rights (…) Does the current state of the broken American dream exemplify where too many of our democracies are heading for today and many more in the very near future? Is history repeating itself? Will youth stand up and say no to a future that looks already old?

Youthful portraits attract visitors with beauty and the perception of a bright future. However, on close examination, cuts and bruises reveal a darker side of reality. ROBIN KID uses art as a means to make us question the notions of power and privilege and more generally the current evolution of humanism in our democratic societies.

ROBIN KID’s hyper-realistic bigger-than-life portraits and life-size sculptures confront the audience with deeply personal stories that expose the injustice in America and beyond in many democracies around the world today and make us question the current evolution of mankind’s History. The socially critical exhibition intends to open up our minds – ultimately, enlightening a more compassionate, understanding world.

ROBIN KID started to work on his series of oil paintings and life-size sculptures The Future Is Old as of the end of the year 2017. This series of artworks was sparked by the strong impression made on ROBIN KID by the Summer 2017 events in Charlottesville-USA where civil right counter-protesters were violently attacked by American nationalists and white supremacists opposing the project of the municipality to take down the equestrian statue of General Robert E Lee, a leading figure of the Confederates and an historical defender of slavery.

ROBIN KID questions how the recent and current social and political history seems to repeat itself in too many countries and the stance today’s youth will decide to take, inspired by Martin Luther King and the words of his wife and famous civil rights activist Coretta Scott King: “Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation“.

“ROBIN KID: The Future is Old” is why the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art of Barcelona believes art can do more. The realistic appearances of gripping details of violence – bloody noses, busted lips, scars and scratches, gang tattoos, wounds, and other graphic images and historical role models – summon crucial social subject matters catching our attention and asking for immediate action from each one of us.

About contemporary artist ROBIN KID

Already internationally recognized for his thought-provoking and socially committed body of artworks, ROBIN KID is a natural-born citizen of the world and a self-educated multidisciplinary contemporary artist, who hijacks traditional technics of the old European Masters -drawing, painting, and sculpture- to question the social issues facing contemporary youth today and even more tomorrow in our polarized world of the 21st century, such as the social determinism, the ever-threatened civil rights, the inequality of opportunity or the thin frontier between innocence and corruption for today’s youth. When asked about his work ROBIN KID likes to underline his exceptional body of works with the famous words of the great 20th century Master Picasso: “Art is not made to decorate apartments, it is an offensive and defensive weapon of war against the enemy”.