Photo by Pep Escoda
Now, when the winds of uncertainty sow doubts and darken the bright autumn days, the joy of participating in a friend’s success is priceless. In my view, Lluc Queralt’s retrospective exhibition at the Fórum Foundation is one of the most decisive among those that comprise Skan, the Tarragona photography festival. An extraordinary selection of the artist’s work from the last fourteen years, curated by the foundation’s director Chantal Grande, it brings together more than fifty works that guide us through the paths the artist has traveled during his constant journeys through different countries.
While still a student, the newspaper “Avui” selected some of his photographs taken in Vietnam to publish them in the central pages of its Sunday supplement. How much emotion, how much contained anxiety, and how much future in our conversations in front of the Macba, surrounded by “graffiti” and vital “skateboys” playing with passersby, benches, and sidewalks. Magnificent in the project “Cadavre&Grafitti”, or painting with contagious joy the “graffiti” on the blinds of my workshop, alongside his brother Dann and Jordi Erola. In “Trayectoria” (Trajectory), as he has titled his exhibition, he proposes a journey in rigorous black and white, through multiple moments captured on the fly and meticulously cared for in the subsequent development and in the choice of paper on which the image has been reproduced. Often forceful, at other times subtle or seduced by devastating and tumultuous beauty, or by the beauty of the absence of beauty, which is not necessarily ugliness. Two photographs captivated me with overwhelming force. One of them, an oriental scene in which a woman, positioned at the center of the composition, coquettishly combs her hair with her hands, while another, submissive and crouching, appears to serve her in her “toilette”. All of this framed within an atmosphere of old and deteriorated wooden coffered ceilings that the photographic black and white reproduces, approaching the “burns” characteristic of surrealist photography from the 1930s. The entire image recalls in a “flashback” the oriental scenes of the painter Mariano Fortuny, and his seductive odalisques surrounded by magical tapestries, all of an aesthetic richness overflowing with luxury and extraordinary execution. The only difference between the two worlds, that of Fortuny and that of Queralt, is that in the photograph, the scene is presided over by an old odalisque, who at first glance might appear young, and what were once rich tapestries are now merely rags drying in the sun. The luxury lies in the treatment of light and the control of blacks. In the words of Chantal Grande, it represents the world. Yes, a world in decline that resists disappearing. The other image that captivated me is a surprising “Zen” photograph, if it can be defined as such. Simple reeds stuck in the beach sand, a vertical poem, upon the horizontal and subtle undulation of the sand. Thus, two worlds that may seem antagonistic are, in reality, complementary. They are the essence of this artist, who, with wings spread and the wind at his back, will take flight once more, to return, as always, radiant.
Now, when the winds of uncertainty sow doubts and darken the bright autumn days, the joy of participating in a friend’s success is priceless. In my view, Lluc Queralt’s retrospective exhibition at the Fórum Foundation is one of the most decisive among those that comprise Skan, the Tarragona photography festival. An extraordinary selection of the artist’s work from the last fourteen years, curated by the foundation’s director Chantal Grande, it brings together more than fifty works that guide us through the paths the artist has traveled during his constant journeys through different countries.
While still a student, the newspaper “Avui” selected some of his photographs taken in Vietnam to publish them in the central pages of its Sunday supplement. How much emotion, how much contained anxiety, and how much future in our conversations in front of the Macba, surrounded by “graffiti” and vital “skateboys” playing with passersby, benches, and sidewalks. Magnificent in the project “Cadavre&Grafitti”, or painting with contagious joy the “graffiti” on the blinds of my workshop, alongside his brother Dann and Jordi Erola. In “Trayectoria” (Trajectory), as he has titled his exhibition, he proposes a journey in rigorous black and white, through multiple moments captured on the fly and meticulously cared for in the subsequent development and in the choice of paper on which the image has been reproduced. Often forceful, at other times subtle or seduced by devastating and tumultuous beauty, or by the beauty of the absence of beauty, which is not necessarily ugliness. Two photographs captivated me with overwhelming force. One of them, an oriental scene in which a woman, positioned at the center of the composition, coquettishly combs her hair with her hands, while another, submissive and crouching, appears to serve her in her “toilette”. All of this framed within an atmosphere of old and deteriorated wooden coffered ceilings that the photographic black and white reproduces, approaching the “burns” characteristic of surrealist photography from the 1930s. The entire image recalls in a “flashback” the oriental scenes of the painter Mariano Fortuny, and his seductive odalisques surrounded by magical tapestries, all of an aesthetic richness overflowing with luxury and extraordinary execution. The only difference between the two worlds, that of Fortuny and that of Queralt, is that in the photograph, the scene is presided over by an old odalisque, who at first glance might appear young, and what were once rich tapestries are now merely rags drying in the sun. The luxury lies in the treatment of light and the control of blacks. In the words of Chantal Grande, it represents the world. Yes, a world in decline that resists disappearing. The other image that captivated me is a surprising “Zen” photograph, if it can be defined as such. Simple reeds stuck in the beach sand, a vertical poem, upon the horizontal and subtle undulation of the sand. Thus, two worlds that may seem antagonistic are, in reality, complementary. They are the essence of this artist, who, with wings spread and the wind at his back, will take flight once more, to return, as always, radiant.
