Miquel Barceló: New sculpture and paintings
They swim swiftly in the open sea, and come and go as if
they were a single being, numerous and silvery. They inspired
the first torpedo designers. Fishing boats follow their
migration routes. It would be good to know if they’re aware
they were intended as nourishment.
- Submarin, Rodrigo Rey-Rosa
In his second show at the Timothy Taylor Gallery Miquel Barceló will make the unprecedented step of devoting an entire exhibition to a single underwater theme. In the ceramic sculpture and thickly encrusted paintings of pounding waves, sea-bed crustaceans and myriad forms of fish, Barceló gives form and matter to an underwater world that usually remains liquid and beyond reach.
All of the paintings in the exhibition were painted earlier this year while living in retreat on a remote island in the Grand Canaries. Travel to widely inaccessible destinations is integral to Barceló’s work to stir an emotional and physical reaction to the world. Through this reaction, Barceló virtually transubstantiates the raw materials of paint and terracotta into emotions made flesh.
Despite the great beauty of the ceramics and paintings in this exhibition, there is a raw brutality that demonstrates Barceló‘s understanding of the vicious side to nature. These are not images of a marine sublime. Fish are depicted with metal fishhooks embedded into their gaping mouths, or at the moment of catching and eating other innocent fellow fish. The elegant form and bright hues of a fish are offset by a mouth of forbidding razor-sharp teeth.
Miquel Barceló is, with Tàpies, one of Spain’s foremost contemporary artists and a major international artworld star. After the phenomenal success of his ceramic sculptures in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, September 2000, this will be the first opportunity for a London audience to experience his extraordinarily vital sculptures. When shown with recent paintings these sculptures fully display the exciting progression evident in Barceló’s work.
Miquel Barceló was born in Felantix, Mallorca in 1957. While studying at the Sant Jordi Art School in Barcelona, he participated in the happenings and protest actions of the group 'Taller Llunàtic'. Miquel Barceló's paintings, drawings and sculptures have been the subject of numerous important exhibitions, including solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London in 1994, the Pompidou in 1996, the Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona in 1997, and the Reina Sofia, Madrid in 1999.