The exhibition “Prender la Mirada” held at Casal Solleric, Palma, Spain, can be considered an essay, as it aims to reflect on and problematize painting, but also other issues such as the relationship with artistic conventions, with the territory, and the sense of belonging to a place. It brings together the work of Mati Klarwein, Rafa Forteza, Barbara Weil, Mercedes Laguens, Tomás Pizá, Jorge Diezma, Bel Fullana, Román Fabré, Tomáš Absolon, Thomas Perroteau, Ian Waelder, Joan Canyelles, Alba Suau, Adrián Martínez, Maite y Manuel, and Mercedes Balle. A group of artists who engage with the pictorial surface, either respecting its limits or exceeding them, and with the territory of the island, either to stay, to leave, or to return.
The exhibition is built around certain concepts and curatorial lines related to the journey and the surface of painting: genealogies, landscapes, materialities, displacements, and, finally, expanded painting, which goes beyond the limits of the canvas or the conventions of painting practice and form. The different thematic lines meet and diverge, intersecting and, through the work of the participating artists, intertwining to form an exhibition of captivated gazes.
If we are to start this essay somewhere, it is precisely with genealogies. These are practices of artists whose experiences go back in time but leave their mark on the present and contemporary painting: either because they continue to produce tirelessly or because they have left an indelible mark wherever they worked.
The inclination towards the transcendent is shown in the work of Mallorcan artist Rafa Forteza (Mallorca, 1955) through the experience of the cyclical. In his paintings, devoid of hierarchical laws, the artist is able to generate a play of overlapping spaces through the repetition of certain patterns. A good example is the painting “Cruces de misterio” (2021) in which many of the elements that recur in his pictorial production can be distinguished: geometric, organic, and vegetal forms, shapes that undulate and vibrate like momentary bursts of color.
