Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo: "If I take something I bring it back to life"
Paris, Apr 24 (EFE), (Camera: Carlos Abascal).- Exuberant Spanish painter Miquel Barcelo arrived in his Paris studio, more like a maze riddled with antiques, books and knickknacks, recounting a time he was gifted an elephant in Thailand and that still didn't know what to do with it, and in the duration of this visit, he cracked a door exposing his mysterious, nomadic world of land, sea, anxiety and light.
"I leave the workshop to take a jump into the water. I am always swimming... I breathe seawater, and drink it too! Then I asked myself, how many octopuses have I killed... and now I do not kill anything anymore. If I take something I bring it back to life, I am no predator," Barcelo, born in Mallorca in 1957, told Efe in an interview.
The world's highest-paid living Spanish artist is featured in "L'inassèchement" (The Drying) exhibition that opens on Saturday in the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, the former Galerie Yvon Lambert.
With its catalogue written by Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas, the show includes new pieces, mostly painted on the island of Mallorca.
Barcelo sees a disfigured submarine world, in stark contrast to the drying of his large canvases. He splashes paint on the tableaus, and sprinkles them with sand and trembling cuttlefish that "appear almost accidentally, like the octopus," he expressed.
"It's all a metaphor: cuttlefish looks like an alien, which is part of my iconography in a very natural way. They are paintings strongly influenced by diving, like most things in my work. The paintings are drawn on the seafloor as I immerse myself and hold my breath," Barcelo vividly described.
Surrounded by skeletons, and what may once have been an anteater mummified on a pedestal, Barcelo's workshop is his laboratory for creating serigraphs and etchings, inspiration driven by the surrounding gorilla skull, elephant ear, self-portrait and African carvings.
"In Mallorca I have animals... cows, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, dogs, chickens and pigeons ... I live with them and once we ate together. I use some of them as models and I like their company. Here the animals are mummified and I believe they are wonderful objects," Barcelo said.
While flipping through a shelf of CDs from Bach to Bob Marley, Barcelo said "this is, 'Do not Think Twice It's Alright', by Bob Dylan but sung by Elvis Presley. It's great!"
Music is the only companion while the artist is at work, although he mentioned how he is haunted by spirits that have "good and bad days."
"Sometimes they bite, sometimes they are funny. The suffering and anguish are the tools of my profession. But usually desire moves me more, a kind of a sexual drive towards things. I do not remember my life before sex. It has always been an integral part. I was a precocious child in that sense and I am certainly very delayed in many others," the Spanish artist added.
Barcelo walks in a magnificent realm of chaos, put back in order by Jean-Philippe, hi
"I leave the workshop to take a jump into the water. I am always swimming... I breathe seawater, and drink it too! Then I asked myself, how many octopuses have I killed... and now I do not kill anything anymore. If I take something I bring it back to life, I am no predator," Barcelo, born in Mallorca in 1957, told Efe in an interview.
The world's highest-paid living Spanish artist is featured in "L'inassèchement" (The Drying) exhibition that opens on Saturday in the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, the former Galerie Yvon Lambert.
With its catalogue written by Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas, the show includes new pieces, mostly painted on the island of Mallorca.
Barcelo sees a disfigured submarine world, in stark contrast to the drying of his large canvases. He splashes paint on the tableaus, and sprinkles them with sand and trembling cuttlefish that "appear almost accidentally, like the octopus," he expressed.
"It's all a metaphor: cuttlefish looks like an alien, which is part of my iconography in a very natural way. They are paintings strongly influenced by diving, like most things in my work. The paintings are drawn on the seafloor as I immerse myself and hold my breath," Barcelo vividly described.
Surrounded by skeletons, and what may once have been an anteater mummified on a pedestal, Barcelo's workshop is his laboratory for creating serigraphs and etchings, inspiration driven by the surrounding gorilla skull, elephant ear, self-portrait and African carvings.
"In Mallorca I have animals... cows, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, dogs, chickens and pigeons ... I live with them and once we ate together. I use some of them as models and I like their company. Here the animals are mummified and I believe they are wonderful objects," Barcelo said.
While flipping through a shelf of CDs from Bach to Bob Marley, Barcelo said "this is, 'Do not Think Twice It's Alright', by Bob Dylan but sung by Elvis Presley. It's great!"
Music is the only companion while the artist is at work, although he mentioned how he is haunted by spirits that have "good and bad days."
"Sometimes they bite, sometimes they are funny. The suffering and anguish are the tools of my profession. But usually desire moves me more, a kind of a sexual drive towards things. I do not remember my life before sex. It has always been an integral part. I was a precocious child in that sense and I am certainly very delayed in many others," the Spanish artist added.
Barcelo walks in a magnificent realm of chaos, put back in order by Jean-Philippe, hi