Miquel Barceló has the strength of a quantum magnet. He attracts everything and all types of artists. His personality goes beyond the atavistic and primitive nature of his art: he is a lighthouse of the seas, a point of gravity around which anyone finds themselves orbiting. And yesterday in the Foyer del Liceu one of those episodes of (deserved) veneration of the artist took place.
La Pedrera and the Gran Teatre have become good friends again on behalf of an established artist from the country. As already happened with Jaume Plensa, for example, yesterday, in the middle of Sant Jordi, the exhibition Tots som grecs that until June 30 brings together Barceló's mud work at Casa Milà had an expanded activity in the form of a concert. Mud and music went hand in hand from the images that Jean Marie del Moral took of the creation process of La Grotte Chaumont (2023), a curious monster with an open mouth that the Mallorcan artist made as a special commission from the Center-Valley Region. of the Loire.
This gorge that evokes an underwater cavern is found inhabiting a small forest in the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire, with its threatening teeth, like stalactites and stalagmites about to close, hiding a rock secret. But it is not that image, complete and contextualized, of which is his last ceramic piece, which we wanted to show in this audiovisual happening. It was about zooming in on detailed images of the textures and qualities that the materials adopt in the hands of Barceló to the point of blurring.
And all this with a series of piano music that he himself suggested: from Claude Debussy's Estampes to the famous Gymnopédie no. 1 and Gnossienees no. 1, 3 and 4. Of course, in the hands of a French interpreter with whom he has a strong friendship, Alain Planès... disciple of Pierre Boulez, specialist in French impressionism and manufacturer of sound caresses.
The program added Cançons i danses by Frederic Mompou, without any image, and then projected fragments of Ball de Carns (1994), a mural that is part of the Macba collection and that would have been difficult to bring to the Liceu for a single day, explains Jordi Feixa, head of cultural projects at the Fundació Catalunya. Hence, there is a recreation in images by Carles Berga for those brief musical minutes that the work has inspired in Francisco Coll and whose premiere takes place here.
“It is part of a 30' long work inspired by nine Spanish painters, from Goya to Miquel, passing through Zurbarán, Sorolla, Dalí...”, says the composer born in Valencia (1985), the only student that Thomas Adès in tutorials. Barceló has known him for a long time. “It showed up in my workshop in Paris,” he says. And it will not be the last time they collaborate: “He is very interested in architecture,” says the artist.
His musical piece, with a Spanish air in its rhythms and textures, recreates a swing, the one that Coll sees in Barceló's way of walking. “Have you recognized me?” the Mallorcan then asks the audience. The Felanitx artist assures that he plays music to work: from Mahler to Jimmi Hendrix. And at full volume. “It's like turning on the headlights of a car at a rabbit,” he points out. He makes her discover the dance it contains and she transforms while he paints.
