THE LIGHT OF WATER AND CLAY
12.11.2020 – 30.12.2020
Exhibition by Pep Madrenas
Opening, Thursday 12th November at 7 p.m.
in ACVIC Centre d'Arts Contemporànies
Granting presence, making visible, representing, water, earth and light… the sea.
Undulating clay surface, supporting a text that leads, in situ and in vision, towards transparency. The achievement of evoking matter through the use of material. From clay, water and fire, to light.
Cultivating, working and serving the material, accompanying it attentively, observing it, in order to capture the magic when it happens. The wisdom of the master artisan who, without forcing the material, leads it like a shepherd, showing its desired expressiveness. Subject to its demands, but with all the freedom of nature.
Objects which, in their stillness, transmit, and succeed in deflecting us out of our way, bringing us to them, to be touched by them.
Pep's work, which includes both utility pieces (prostheses that improve our physical abilities) and independent, non-functional, artistic pieces (media for symbolic content), avoids visual language to use the language of sensitive perception. The practice of an understanding which places the intuitive before the intellectual, which is, I think, what allows us to incorporate art into life.
Leaving the part to take care of the whole.
Ferran Blancafort
Architect
Josep Madrenas Palou. He has a degree in artistic ceramics from the Massana school in Barcelona
For 30 years he has been a teacher of artistic ceramics in art and crafts schools.
Between 1972 to the present day, he has set up three pottery workshops, two of them in Osona and a third in Pallars Jussà, in all of which he has worked on artistic ceramics and ceramic product design.
He has conducted specialised seminars on ceramic techniques in private schools, and has also given lectures at the request of different organisations.
He has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and has participated in both county and national cultural and artistic events.
He has been awarded the diploma of Master Craftsman of the Generalitat de Catalunya, with distinction.
He was selected by the Generalitat de Catalunya to participate in the 52nd edition of the Smithsonian Festival in Washington DC, as part of the "Catalonia Tradition and creativity from the Mediterranean".
The Barcelona Design Museum has acquired the sculptural piece “Crisàlide”,"Chrysalis",to be incorporated as part of the permanent collection.
Photography: Pep Madrenas. La llum d’aigua i fang, 2020. Photographies by Ferran Blancafort.
