Photo by urbanrulesBCN via Visualhunt
In the same wide, with white walls and high ceilings room that formerly occupied the Iguapop Gallery, from December 2nd 2010, we can find a bookshop-art gallery-cultural events space called Mutt that has become a landmark in Barcelona. If you are an “expender” do not ever go inside Mutt because you won’t help out with buying one of its exclusive excellently selected titles. Oeuvres in book, catalogs or magazines form that you can browse freely while enjoying, if you are lucky, a vernissage event or an opening of an exhibition on the walls of this creative space. We wanted to ask some questions to Juanjo Fernandez, the founder of Mutt, to learn more about the so-called mutters and their place of origin …
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1. For those who don’t know your project, could you summarize what we find in Mutt?
Mutt is a bookstore and an art gallery totally independent, we select books of all kinds about contemporary art, design, fashion, photography, street art, illustration, photography, architecture, etc. Besides magazines, zines and independent publications. In the gallery we investigate and program international artists whose work seems to be relevant or it may be in the future. We operate more like a physical magazine, besides the selection of titles and artists, we organise publications releases, music events or anything that we find interesting.
2. How did the idea for this creative space / bookstore / art gallery came to you?
The idea came to us because of the boredom of working for a lot of insufferable “vedettes”, who have no idea, no knowledge or experience and their only concern is to get medals. The medals come after hard work and are ephemeral. So the formula is working hard and care about the people who come to visit us.
3. Why did you choose the name of Mutt?
Mutt is the pseudonym used by Marcel Duchamp, a benchmark for us, to sign his famous work, Fountain, the idea came at a dinner at my great friend Pietro Sedda’s house, in Milan.
4. Your calendar of events and concerts is really full, can you tell us something that we will see or hear in Mutt?
For the reentré in September we have a slap-up exhibition by the Korean artist Miju Lee, we are super fans of her work, a true must that no one should miss. In the fall we will also release an accessories new brand by Outsiders Division, and some things that we prefer not to disclose …
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Photo by urbanrulesBCN via Visualhunt
5. Every time I take a look of your books I wish I could buy every of them… Which ones, in your opinion, are the “essentials” of your collection for sale?
We are never quite satisfied with the books we offer, we always want more and more, and we try to offer that ones that nobody would find in other stores, or are harder to find. But our favorites are any of the books that we sell.
6. And finally … after a little “journalistic” reasearch, I’ve read that there is this concept called “mutter”. How would you define it (if that’s possible)?
Mutter is anyone who feels identified with what we do, nothing more. People for us ALWAYS comes first!
Mutt is located at Comerç 15.
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