Nature at Gracia
The fact that Antoni Gaudí’s building, La Pedrera, gleams in the foreground through the window of this attic pavilion on Paseo de Gracia in Barcelona, seems to me, to be the perfect pretext to establish a crossed dialogue between this unique space (with no other apparent use other than the privilege of its contemplation), the landscape of the city and some objects arranged by me in the foreground.
La Pedrera and the city in the background are both seen through round-arched window at the back of a room, whose layout forces a strictly orthogonal contemplation. This grants the scene a certain classic character -somewhere between ideal and imagined- or not quite of this world, fitting well with my preference for images conceived as artifice.
An icosahedron hangs from the ceiling in the form of an inverted baldachin, whose points delimit the composition in the foreground. On the circular table, four objects: a white sphere, a small bouquet of evergreens in a glass of water, and two pieces by the Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala.
Wirkkala’s Jahresteller plate, found in the foreground, is inspired by the groupings of inverted domes that bubbles produce on a surface; the evergreens are succulents with fractal geometry; and the Ovalis vase (also by Wirkkala) filled with stones from Altea beach, together with the round white candle, collect the light that enters through the window in the background and the opening on the side.
I have always been interested in the architecture of spaces and beautiful, simple objects, as well as the relationships that they all establish with each other. Beyond the sentimental or biographical aspect of things, I am attracted to their material essence, the contrast between the finite nature of some objects and the enduring nature of others, and particularly, when I use charcoal, the dramatising effect that light exerts on the matter of all things.
The scene strives to find harmony in only one of its many possible forms. The meaning of all this is not fully revealed, it remains open to interpretation. So let us look at it.