Search results for ""Author Miquel Barcelo""

Le Grand Verre de terre is an artist book that accompanies the special anniversary issue of Matador magazine. It collects the impressive images that the Mallorcan artist made for the National Library of France, in Paris in 2016: a gigantic fresco of 190 meters long by 6 meters high made in clay on the crystals of the mythical library and populated by the fantastic shapes, animals and creatures that shape Barceló’s imagination. A living work, conceived to be observed from inside and outside the building, which introduced the visitor to an extraordinary exhibition. The fresco was erased by the artist when the exhibition ended, and only the memory of these pages remain.

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This book, published to accompany the recent ‘Works of Fire’ exhibition at the Céret Museum of Modern Art, presents Miquel Barceló’s ceramics work. Created in Majorca in a former tilery and brickyard transformed into a workshop, the terracotta figures are damaged or disturbed by the introduction of bricks in the still-fresh clay, which humanizes their familiar forms. The self-portrait is a recurrent theme: eyes and mouth engraved into vases, and amphorae in shapes inherited from Antiquity; skulls and heads explicitly evoke the idea of vanity, an ever-present theme in Barceló’s work, which appears in the fractures, cracks, and swelling that the clay undergoes before or during firing. Apart from the self-portraits, there are emanations of the animal or plant world, also disturbed by the bricks which come to inhabit or destroy them. Rosebuds bloom, fish live and fossilize, bricks form secret cavities. These spectacular works owe their presence to their apparent fragility as well as to their life force, and the struggle and dramas they welcome. All Barceló’s themes are present in his ceramic works. As ever, the passage of time and death are expressed in the most fragile and durable way.

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