1990 - 1996 (2)

THE POINT OF VIEW OF ROMÀ PANADÉS

This is an open work, because the point of view is curious, warm and flexible. Romà Panadès constructs with techniques taken from the fullest contemporaneity. He uses the language of the cinema: close-ups and extreme close-ups, zooms, sequences, crossovers of perspectives, incorporating the rhythm of music and dance. He submerges extraordinarily into the unknown Gaudí, and experiments with processes close to sgraffito and sculpture.

The point of view is expressed in a look at the world, at the same time delicate and clear, complex and simple. And the world thus created and recreated becomes a universe of dialogue, of solitudes becoming solidarity. It becomes an ever-resuming and diverse conversation between the characters and with us. We see through their looks, we enter into the same mysterious setting. And at the end of the day we become part of it and it envelops us. The efficiency of the play of mirrors between the spectator and the actor, the outside and the inside, this permanent drive to discover the questioned identities that is essential in artistic work, beats in each brushstroke.

The dialogue –often established between couples– to which the artist invites us is the same fusion that excited Pedro Salinas: “to live, feeling alive”. And he incorporates out-of-the-ordinary nourishing elements, such as unusual profiles, the exploration of new horizons of the human body –backs, foreshortened figures– that have traditionally been little thought of and we discover now as being welcoming and expressive. All in all it is a calling to complicity, the first stone laid of all creative and balanced relationship between the inhabitants of this earth.
dialogue, of solitudes becoming solidarity. It becomes an ever-resuming and diverse conversation between the characters and with us. We see through their looks, we enter into the same mysterious setting. And at the end of the day we become part of it and it envelops us. The efficiency of the play of mirrors between the spectator and the actor, the outside and the inside, this permanent drive to discover the questioned identities that is essential in artistic work, beats in each brushstroke.

The dialogue –often established between couples– to which the artist invites us is the same fusion that excited Pedro Salinas: “to live, feeling alive”. And he incorporates out-of-the-ordinary nourishing elements, such as unusual profiles, the exploration of new horizons of the human body –backs, foreshortened figures– that have traditionally been little thought of and we discover now as being welcoming and expressive. All in all it is a calling to complicity, the first stone laid of all creative and balanced relationship between the inhabitants of this earth.

The canvases contain the thematic stamp and atmosphere of everything that is Barcelona, of the Mediterranean. In one part are outlined palm trees, as a warm placenta contrasting with figures that are almost heirs of nineteenth-century exactitude. In another, the dawning of the popular dances and the silence of the port, the tension of the billiards player or the effort of the swimmer, like the circus was before, the art of bullfighting and the dodgem cars at the children’s fairs. Everywhere, the presence of the sea.

The development of Panadés’ figuration, on the borders between reality and symbol, flows into essence, into motion: a unique atmosphere. He does not describe finished realities: nor does he imitate or recreate nature, but rather dreams within the dream, loves within fleeting love, plays within the game, he is concerned about adventure, he fulfils solitudes. He is fascinated in the ways of Salvat-Papasseit and Mercè Rodoreda and, like Foix, is excited by the new and in love with the old. We often forget, in the polarisation between figuration and abstraction, that in the latter not everything is necessarily avant-garde and from the former both experimentation and innovation are possible. Works like these, in evolution and continually breaking with their own matrixes, are meeting points of that which, in both great families of contemporary painting, is a strict and, if need be, inflamed, creative drive.

The collection will surprise those who will have recent memories of works of other stronger colours and a more energetic line, such as the bullfighting scenes. Now we are also presented with apparently gentler subject matters of daily life, such as the series of beaches or that of the sleeping women. Has he decreased the effort? Not at all. We find ourselves before the search for intensity through new, more introspective ways: the browns, ochres, earthy colours, violets and reds; the re-reading of Pompeiian tradition at the service of the 21st century; the movement and stillness of dense static tension. This show has thickness in itself, but is coherent with its starting point, the previous work. It happily opens new thematic lines –dreams, the effort of swimmers, musical instruments, some urban landscapes– and techniques –the use of powdered marble and works on paper. It is an open work.

Xavier Vidal-Folch