ALEIX MATARÓ

Núria Guinovart exhibits close to the “Boat” of Cement sculpture

Yesterday, at the auditorium of Montcada i Reixac, the inaugurational opening of a temporary exhibition featuring the artist Nuria Guinovart took place. The exhibition’s proximity to the famous  “boat” of the cement company Asland’s, is just merely an anecdote, but creates interesting reflections on the uses that can occur in the gray sand and how rich can be the path that leads to painting. Guinovart spreads cement on a thin layer of fabric, over which it will work on, and starts to make incisions trying to provoke an expresive accident.

The artist recalls that the Auditorium has already visited her twice. The first was in 2008 when she was granted with the first prize at the 2007 Juan Ramon Masoliver Painting Competition. She has returned five years later with her own pictorial discourse, but more mature and consolidated. The artist admits the Award helped her to see that her work was well received and gave her wings to move forward with more confidence. This reflection may seem wrong for a poet like Rilke when in his “Letters to a Young Poet” he rejects with hate the critics and emphasizes a more genuine personal artistic expression, with no more guarantees than the inner self approval. But for me all artists are even better, if they are able to translate their inner impulses in a communicative language, maintaining an empathy with the environment, without losing the sincerity in oneself. So the “feedback” from the spectators and his judgment, whether or not based on prejudice, always provides some hints.

We return to Montcada: Nuria Guinovart recent work has been carried out between 2011 and 2012. As she tells us, it has given more weight to this exhibition than the previous, with her immersion into the intaglio, where she plays with the concepts of hardness, rough feeling and incisions on the cement. The materials, textures and line drawings are the letters inside Guinovart’s paintings. In the engravings, these concepts are coated with a more rational air.

But have there been any developments in the work of Guinovart in the last five years? Maybe at first glance it seems that not. But if we compare, we would be able to appreciate a different kind of lines: more erosion and punishment in the work of 2008, more streamlined now. It should be noted that the drawing on the concrete doesn’t obey to random action but to the guidance of an artist’s inner speech: thinking of a situation, a feeling, an idea. It is not just Spreads cement and scratching without any sense. The drawing expresses a state and the cement empowers it with its own speech of gray and textures.

Behind the natural air of the pieces is a constructive process of creation. What Guinovart has very clear is that her path is transforming little by little, and her speech also changed drastically. Pollock as well followed a similar speech, and the changes were introduced gradually. Speeches are perhaps generated with different nerves, but they are growing quite similarly to as the trees grow: with a steady peace despite the storms and the hardships of climate and environment. The Montcada Auditorium is located at Plaza de la Iglesia 12.

Aleix Mataró
Crítico de Arte
Asociación Internacional de Críticos de Arte

Related Images: