Ethereal papers. Diari Bondia 16/02/2022 - Poet philosopher and writer Manel Gibert

PV16 - Chinese ink on paper

Already, from a distance, one can see the virtual fire in Taranmana’s front window, a unique gallery - that pleases the senses and the mind - directed by Aminda Saludes. Up close, symbolic flames conceal the forest. Once inside the space, the fiery colors give way to the sprouting vegetation in the guise of a labyrinth of bare paintings - suspended in the center or hanging on the walls - with foggy horizons and a forest reborn out of gray ash by virtue of tinted or unstained surfaces in black and white.

Amongst them, time floats with blurry images – with concepts that are complementary - such as the intimate connection of brighter shades and penumbra, created by reproducing a ritual of repetitive and meticulous gestures, consciously projecting very fine strokes, or thick patches generated by precarious accidental marks born in the process. 

It is Joan Xandri's series entitled Survival, another example of a magnificent combination of accumulated experience, talent and intellectual depth, that the artist delivers with each new chapter of sensitive material - beyond beauty.

On show, supported by the fluent correlated plastic canvas, the earth has solidified in the undergrowth.  The support has received the concentrated sediments of the pictorial creative process of emptiness and fullness; an accumulation provoked by actions of minimum and maximum expression, defining and balancing the apparent chaos and the underlying order of the forest.

The conclusion is that, the path of aesthetic research must be done by occupying unknown, enigmatic, metamorphic spaces.  As is reflected in one of the five haiku’s of Augusti Bartra presented in the exhibition: 

“With a distracted hand, 

when passing, I touched the tree. 

Now it answer's me. "

Equidistant in between figuration and abstraction, Joan Xandri paints metaphors and identifies himself intuitively and with clairvoyance with aspects of nature that impress him. The author´s visceral response is based more on emotion than on rational understanding. And the symbiosis of the whole installation stimulates the observer's gaze, since in its complexity the contrasts are open to very different interpretations; fortunately, through the silently coated papers,  the  symbolic intention, shows that these pieces are not mere ornamental objects.

This body of work continues with the dialectical compendium that precedes it, Alternatura (2019), a consequence and evolution of the sparks that ignited it. Here and there, the sublime approaches the existential abyss through categoric fragments of landscape, and transcendence becomes immanent through the sublimation of invoked and evoked elements, circumscribed to a contemplative sphere. 

This is confirmed when one goes out into the night and fleetingly sees the burning continue, notices the cold air, smells the smoke in the proximity and knows that we are fragile transformations of fire and water; ethereal papers that flow and, are supports and parts of works of art, welcome images, embrace them.