arts & culture

Spaniards have two family names: the father’s and mother’s first surnames. This means the mother’s maiden name is passed down a further generation than in Anglophone cultures. Barcelona-born film director Josep Joan Bigas i Luna (1946–2013) used both his surnames as his artistic pseudonym: Bigas Luna.

At his first major retrospective, Més de Bigas i Més de Luna, currently on display at Museu Can Framis, his surnames are separated to create “more Bigas” and “more Luna,” recreating the dualities in his artistic work: reality and desire, nature and culture, religion as an experience and religion as speculation, north and south as different cultures, fiction and reality, normal and depraved aspects of sex, or the two sides two Spanish macho behavior.

Among the collections of paintings, drawings, installations and poetic interventions, look for a small screen titled Collar de Moscas, a video masterpiece featuring a necklace of living flies.