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Versione
italiana
09 March – 30
April 2004
Tues-Sat 11.00 – 19.00, closed holidays
The first bronze sculptures by Barceló that I
am aware of were done in 1991, and are mostly of modest scale
formed from impressions he got on his first trip to Mali in 1988. A
second group of bronzes was done in 1993 and cast near Paris at
Clementi. Sopa II and Tête de Cochon sur Colonne are both from this
more substantial series of sculptures. The subject matter of the
two sculptures is connected. At his farm on the north shore of
Majorca, Barceló has a Matanzas every autumn, and is based on the
proscribed slaughter of a pig. Sopa II is the second version of the
soup subject matter, which is similar to Sopa I, not in this
exhbition, but with the addition of a a large ladle to stir with.
This sculpture is very close thematically to the painting Sopa
Marina, 1984, which shows a blue watery circle with a red wood pole
sticking from the middle of the painting to beyond its edge. Sopa
II is also close to the bubbling vortex of blood and guts and food
in more contemporaneous paintings such as Gran Animal Europeu,
1991, and De Rerum Natura, 1992, and it is therefore a small step
to also associate Sopa II with the annual Matanzas which no doubt
provided the backdrop for the development of Tête de Cochon. This
association is left in my mind despite the more vegetarian
appearance of Sopa II.
All of the other
sculptures in this catalogue, except Autoportrait sur Pichet, are
based on ceramics. In contrast to Sopa II, the model for which was
made from plaster, and Tête de Cochon, made from a combination of
plaster and an objet trouvé, these sculpture models are made from
ceramic pots which Barceló manipulates before they dry. Again it is
interesting to compare the sculptures to contemporaneous paintings,
in the middle to late nineties. The artist at this time often uses
very heavily and irregularly undulating canvas as the support for
his painting. From the haphazard arrangement of waves and creases
in the surface the artist intuitively teases out, with a seemingly
very little effort, the shapes that will come to make the painting.
This sort of interaction with the work can also be seen in these
bronzes. A squashed vase, when it falls to the ground, provides the
artist with a not entirely amorphous mass which with just a few
deft strokes can be transformed into a highly suggestive form,
ranging from the skulls of Cap Petit damunt Cap Gran to the
hollowed out skin of the an elephant head in Crani Gran.
In two of the sculptures, Dos Caps d'Animals
Llargs and Aufabia am Cap, the head(s) rest on a clearly defined
inverted ceramic vase which has a number of small indentations and
protrusions which suggest zoomorphic and biomorphic details ranging
from overripe figs to rabbit holes. It should be noted that the
artist has since 1996 made a large amount of ceramics, often
painted, and as large as 150 cm high, that are works of art in
their own right.
No view of life would be complete without a bit
of humour. Autoportrait sur Pichet provides just that. It seems
that the original plaster head was originally put on the pitcher to
dry and the artist liked the look so much that he left it there. I
have seen this sculpture with a tie around the neck of the pitcher,
and it looks quite elegant. It is another example of the ease with
which Barceló uses objects in a sometimes nonchalant but always
authoritative way in the pursuit of his art.
Caramull de Caps amb Pinocchio is reminiscent of
another sculpture, Pinocchio Mort, which is not in this exhibition.
In Caramull Barceló conflagrates two tales, one of the singing
Bremer Stadtmusikanten, the other that of Pinocchio whose nose
would grow whenever he told a lie. In Caramull the artist mulls the
fate of these fictional characters after their stories are
finished, the logical end of their passage through time
immortalized in bronze.
Luca Marenzi
London,
February 2004
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