“Exhibiting in La Pedrera is like continuing the dialogue with Gaudí, which I began years ago in the Chapel of the Cathedral of Palma. There I spent more time looking at his contributions than the empty space that I had to fill. It was a long conversation that continues now , which is fertile and will produce other things,” Miquel Barceló explained this morning at the presentation of the exhibition We are all Greeks, – a title taken from a phrase by Shelley – which opens today to the public until June 30.
The public will be able to see nearly 80 ceramic pieces of the almost 4,000 that the artist has produced throughout his career. “Ceramics in this country has a very important tradition,” stated Barceló, while complaining that “in Barcelona there was a magnificent Ceramics Museum, which has disappeared.”
“The novelty is that it is the first time that a selection of his work in this field is exhibited in chronological order,” comments the critic and poet Enrique Juncosa, curator of the exhibition. It is complemented by fifteen paintings and several notebooks.
The first space we enter is the one dedicated to Mali, where Barceló spent long periods of time between 1988 and the beginning of this decade, and where she began making ceramics, with the help of Dogon women.
They continue with those dedicated to their Mallorcan workshops – disused teulers with enabled ovens – and to the project for the Mallorcan cathedral. A reinterpretation of the parable of the loaves and the fishes that he developed with polychrome ceramics to create a three-dimensional effect, with monkfish and lobsters, turbot and sole like those on display here.
There is a small room dedicated to the projection of Paso Doble, the performance premiered at the Avignon festival in 2006, with Barceló and the choreographer Josep Nadj making and breaking down a mud wall.
Several display cases of notebooks, with Mallorcan themes and trips to countries like Greece and Japan.
In the area dedicated to the Vilafranca de Bonany teulera, which he has used since 2008, we see the black-green Rhododendron from 2019. “Ceramics is a branch of botany, a perversion of ikebana,” suggests the artist.
The route closes with an area of ??totems, where large-format pieces have been placed, which can be construction elements or individualized figures.
For the occasion, those responsible for La Pedrera have preferred not to cover the windows of the room, so the public has views over Passeig de Gràcia and the terraces with Jujol forgings, opening up very unusual perspectives.
Marta Lacambra, general director of the Fundació Catalunya la Pedrera, insisted yesterday that, as happened previously with those of Jaume Plensa and Antonio López in the same space, the one in Barceló is an “expanded” exhibition, which over the course of several months will establish partnerships with other institutions in the city.
A concert by the pianist Alain Planès in the lobby of the Gran Teatre del Liceu with a composition by Francisco Coll made for the occasion, and another by Pascal Comelade in the Palau; a bibliographic sample of Barceló in the Library of Catalonia in the run-up to Sant Jordi; events at the Miró Foundation and ESMUC; the artist’s public conversations with Albert Serra and Vicenç Altaió, and a documentary by Josep Maria Civit make up the complementary proposal.
