Ivan Forcadell (Alcanar, Tarragona, 1993) has been interested in collectors and institutions for some years now, but he is still surprised that the photos, memories and customs of anonymous people who built their lives -in their own words- “la poca abundancia” and which he recovers in his work, are bequeathing to exhibition spaces such as the Gran Teatre del Liceu. There, this February, he presented his intervention Tia Carme’s garden, and his works are part of collections such as those of the Vila Casas Foundation, the Lluís Coromina Foundation or the Soho House. In addition, he has exhibited in spaces as varied as Mèdol, Center for Contemporary Arts in Tarragona; Lo Pati, Terres de l’Ebre Art Center; galleries in Barcelona, ??Madrid, Lisbon, Los Angeles or fairs and festivals in Miami, Chicago or Seoul. Currently, he is working on a mural for the Union of Sports Federations of Catalonia.
Since he came across old portraits of people no longer remembered in the family home, the starting point of his work is usually the photographs he acquires in markets, flea markets, antique shops or of houses that are emptied when their inhabitants die. “I’m quite a garbage collector,” he says, recognizing the fascination that any object that testifies to past lives provokes in him, especially fabrics. Alternating large canvases and his own paintings, he builds installations and murals. “I came from making a strange figuration, and I realized that I was becoming more and more interested in the abstract, and that I had found the means to make my contribution,” he comments.
The Cabagnon Suite No. 2 pays homage to the cabin that Le Corbusier built in 1952 on the Costa Brava as a gift for his wife. Forcadell, starting from the most immediate reality, builds a language that tends towards the abstract, with bright and strident colors, to return again to the earth, to Nature, and install “my cave, where one cries, where one licks oneself.” the wounds”. He follows the saying “Qui guard quan tea menja quan vol” to refer to the “ability to take advantage of things and give them the maximum useful life, on the one hand; and on the other hand, everything is a field, the larger the work, the more it is assimilated to a garden, to a piece of land.”
In 2023 he participated in the group exhibition organized by Lo Pati with the significant title Artista de Poble. If with his intervention at the Liceu he has intended to take people who would never have been able to afford such a visit to the temple of opera, his language becomes overwhelming in conveying what it means to have been born and raised in a place like the Delta, between the sea ??and countryside. Her main references are her grandmother, her mother and her sister, who have dedicated themselves to working the land; as well as the fishmongers with whom she worked: “I can only talk about what I know, and what I know is what I live, and what I live is all that has seen me grow. And I think I have the tools to show what we are down there, 100% Mediterranean, and that interests everyone, even though for many years we were led to believe that it was not.”
Knowing that you are the first member of the family with a university education gives you a responsibility, at least a testimony. Forcadell was able to finish his Design studies at EINA – a profession that he left early to dedicate himself to his artistic practice – thanks to the inheritance he received from his grandmother: “It literally came to me until the last day of college. The next day, I no longer had a penny.”
He defends collective creation, highlights the essential support of Héctor Figueroa, Joaquín Boymer and Txus Fibla, “the tieta, which is fundamental.” He is interested in the work of female artists, especially Louise Bourgeois, and fully identifies with the link between Miró and the countryside, as well as with the Mediterranean nature of Miquel Barceló, for whom he feels an admiration that he is willing to express passionately.
He does not like to talk about turning points, or moments of take-off, but he does recognize that with the confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic he was able to “stop and connect with myself.” He enjoys the moment he lives, but without it diminishing his restlessness or the responsibility of working day by day to remain in contact with the land.
