Ever since his breakthrough as the only Spanish participant in documenta 1982, Miquel Barceló (b. 1957) has been one of the foremost exponents of the New Painting. Matter and form are in direct symbiosis in his work, the creative process of combining paint with materials such as clay, mud and soil determining the final appearance of the work. The urge to get back to elementary and primeval states can be felt in all of these pieces, blurring the transition between becoming and decaying: exemplified by sensual fruit in overripe lushness that starts to rot the very next moment, mutating into skulls. Nature with all its changeableness can be found here not only as motif, but as an extra-artistic process integrated into the genesis of the work: for instance when the artist allows termites to riddle his works on paper with holes, or when ashes from his studio fireplace blacken the canvases. Barceló thus sees his paintings and sculptures as part of a system in constant flux, as an open cosmos between life and death. Miquel Barceló's work has been exhibited at venues including the Centre Pompidou, the documenta and the Biennale di Venezia.

Hardcover
24 x 29,5 cm
144 pages
German
ISBN 978-3-86828-363-1
Editor: Ingried Brugger, Florian Steininger
Texts: Ingried Brugger, Pere Gimferrer, Donatien Grau, Florian Steininger, Philippe Büttner
Published by Kehrer