The Museum will present in the Oval Room a large video installation by Eugènia Balcells (Barcelona, ​​1943). Created in New York City between 1980 and 1982, From the center is a fundamental work both in the artist's career and in the history of video art. This work of major technical complexity and richness of meaning evokes the great megalithic monuments of antiquity; it is an "electronic Stonehenge", in the artist's words. Due to its quality and importance in the historical perspective of Catalan contemporary art, the Generalitat recently acquired it for the National Collection of Contemporary Art and now forms part of the MNAC collections.

The 12 monoliths located in a circle form a large walkable panopticon and offer a sum of partial views of the environment that, as a whole, represent a desire for a unitary and absolute contemplation of the world. All the images were filmed over two years from a single fixed point located on the roof of a building in downtown Manhattan, on the corner of Broadway and Grand Sreet. The sounds and music of each of the twelve channels were created by order of Eugènia Balcells for the artist, musician and sound pioneer Peter Van Riper (1942-1998). The sum of the twelve video and sound channels generate an intense and complex space.

With a language specific to contemporary times and new cultures of the image, From the center links with the poetic and philosophical ambition of Romanticism and the dream of connecting empathetically with the universe. The combination of technology and spirituality, together with the reflection on the gaze and vision, make this work a work that not only has a historical interest but can also be accessible and significant from the perspective of our present. It is also worth noting the possible relationships with the great machines of mystical vision that are Romanesque paintings, the core of the museum's collection.