2011

Rafa Forteza, painter, engraver and sculptor, has been influenced by the Spanish and German gestural and informalist tradition of the second half of the twentieth century, and is considered to be one of the most important contemporary visual artists in the country. Formally speaking, a large part of his work can also be linked to Arte Povera, through his stylized sculptures, or to Abstract Expressionism, though his output reflects pure creativity, which has not been contaminated by imitating previously established models.

The first stage in Teresa Matas’ career centred on introspection, on autobiographical work. Later she became involved in the social problems of women, though she points out that she does not see her task in terms of asserting women’s rights, rather as a way to express what she feels. In this way, through videos, installations, occasional drawings and paintings, as well as clothes and fabrics transformed into artistic objects, Matas introduces questions such as ablation or women’s inequality in the Third World.

Guillem Nadal looks deeply at concepts related to a very personal mapping, which he has explored throughout his long career, and expressed through large-format pictorial works and installations based on organic shapes and materials. The recurring themes of his work – death, sex and loneliness – have been evolving to the point of reflecting a metaphorical image of his existential doubts.

Horacio Sapere produces art that is not easy to understand. His constant travelling, which is so present in his work, makes up a labyrinth that invites us to embark on an extraordinary journey in which several aspects of the environment align themselves with the uninterrupted presence of Sapere’s personal obsessions. His aim is to construct a symbolic world in which objectivity and subjectivity are organized in symbolic and powerful language.

Fundamental to the work of Amparo Sard is the function of water, whiteness and also the artist’s own body as skin/support. All told, the fragmentation of the body is closely linked to the image that is achieved thanks to the optical effect of the water and the minute holes that create an illusion of reality in her work on paper. Moreover, their whiteness reveals sobriety, subtleness and durability, which contrast with the – sometimes extreme – situations that she subjects her figures to.

Antoni Socias uses a varied language in which photography coexists happily with video, and he manipulates images and phrases from television programmes to configure a process both plastic and mental that serves as a virtual antidote to the stupefaction induced by television.

In the early part of his career, Rafel Timoner painted material and abstract pictures inspired by the space/time dichotomy. Following this, he evolved towards sculpture, the field in which he has based his work over the last twenty years. In the 1990s he created the minimalist series Espais metàl·lics. He has progressively introduced text into his works, either words or written fragments, with a conceptual aesthetic, while also using photography.

Fernando Megías currently centres his work on questioning his previous artistic output, his work in minimal art, conceptual art and other styles. His most recent works take visual poetry on video as a starting point and once again use drawing as a means of representation, thanks to the simplicity of the material and the infinite possibilities that it offers, as a game between the analogical and the digital.