Conxita Oliver
Heartbeats
In a world immersed in the speed and the whirlwind of information, Teresa Vall Palou takes us to a cosmos of reflection and solitude allowing us to delve into the essence of the absolute. For the artist, art is an extension of life itself, a place where he or she seeks to recognize the state of intensity with which he or she lives.
Heir to the tradition of in-formalism and of abstract expressionism, she does not avoid any expressive formula to explore and investigate a great variety of registers: painting, engraving, drawing, artist books and ceramics. Different art language which she use every opportunity to achieve the results of desired expression. With a silent solo career, developed through a strictly abstract language, Vall Palou has carried out a thoughtful exercise of subjective interpretation of the feelings with strength and boldness of resources that do not hide at any time her introspective side.
The re-vindication of painting and its discourse goes from the Gestural to the Material, going through the Spatial and Stainism. In spaces without limits, which she usually executes in large formats, her impulsive and dynamic practice responds to her most energetic concerns that gush with total freedom of execution. She leaves aside all that is superfluous and keeps hold of the pulse and gesture, the way of the pigment, the transit of the mark of the brush, the length of the stroke on the canvas, the accumulation of density, of drippings… on which are successively superimposed, overlapping and merging till it establishes a framework and a pictorial grid made of subtle contributions and sedimentations. Its own energetic cadence gives it a vibration that offers its interior pulse, which is so characteristic of her work.
Veritable labyrinths that allows us to visually travel through its interior, from the surface to its compact depths and converse with its most intimate secrets that often pip through cracks of light. In the present compositions, colour takes centre stage and its ranges are bright and impressive: green, blue, red, black and white, particularly becoming energetic vibrations. Also, spaces with atmospheric moods, made of glazes and transparencies, and seek dialogue with compact mass and fields of monochrome colour that accurately compensates space constructively.
A study of an indisputable pictorial claim interrelated to a single whole. A battle that the artist maintains with her work, superimposing, juxtaposing, coming together… until the work itself no longer asks for anything more and surrenders. This confrontation, however, admits no insecurities, doubts or retreats because this battle is only won by hard discipline, reflection and demand in the method and in the process. On the other hand, she would not impose her will over the work till she has completely defeating it and making it hers. A large visual and tactile expansion of great aesthetic pleasure, where the profusion and abundance of accidents involving a great plastic forcefulness and evocative lyricism, between the power of emotion and mind control. An emotion that gradually leaks through the entire process of execution, a passion that has been rationalizing and slowly altering from the first instinctive impulse.
But in contrast, there are other works that are the product of a much more direct action that emerge as completely fluid and impulsive without a sum of consecutive experiences. They are like visions or microscopic cellular organisms multiplying in a corpuscular expansion of constant evolution.
With pictorial practice Vall Palou has made the claims of non-figurative art not as a limitation, but, on the contrary, as an imposition. Mental landscapes that are the result of an introspective processes, full of internal demands, criticisms, ideas and personal challenges that become the reflection of the most vital points of herself. Some canvases, within a substantial pictorial abstraction, at all times confirm the link established between the self and the environment.
In this sense, her work expresses the deepest feelings of man: satisfactions, frustrations, pain, joy… through roughness of texture, the vaporisation of a transparency, stabilizing organization, disestablishing structure, sequential rhythms of extreme verticality, the dissolution and liquidity of the painting; the hardness of a black, the depth of a blue, the overwhelming strength of a red or the infinite purity a white. Regardless of all accessories that offer the purest essential universality, that is, the intimate question of the world. A repertoire of formal energy released in an explosion of nuances and registers that enhance the metaphorical force that allows everyone to evoke his own imaginary world.
This entire process is referred to the support of canvas but it is much more magnified in the case of papers. The radical spontaneity, automatism and gestures reach the maximum impact, above all because since the same technique offers much more freedom and allows, above all, immediacy. Vall Palou’s paintings on paper are direct, of the first intention and thus preserve the freshness of the first ray. It is a privileged language of direct expression, constant experimentation, a vehicle that allows ductile autonomy of action difficult to achieve in painting on canvas. All this constitutes a kind of personal laboratory, the artist’s much more intimate space, the instant download between mind and hand flowing rapidly on the surface; in short, the means which wins the battle of time. For Vall Palou, this practice is a genuine writing of her thoughts, an exercise that allows her to follow the traces of her emotional swings and each individual moment within the set of her work.
Moreover, Vall Palau’s raku pottery, of dry and rough skin, talks with a series of black paintings of spectral depth. The Voice of pottery – the ancestral art of clay and fire – the possibility to investigate new approaches and new morphologies. A clear determination to experiment, along with practicing good craftsmanship and intricacies of tradition have resulted in a ceramic, which is, above all, a pure art that is conceived as a defence of the material with all its palpitation and its intrinsic qualities. If traditional morphologies have been centred exclusively on the hollow – where it’s utility resides -, limited to shapes that enclose spaces within the classic types, designed to hold something in. Her ceramic pieces are an open expand of creativity in favour of the concept. Transgress the function of deposit and alter formal and conceptual traditional concept means that the ceramic material can be used to create sculptural objects away from orthodox forms like the cliché glasses, plates, bowls or containers that serves some thing.
In Vall Palou’s work a balance of opposites is often manifested that give this point of opposing polarities so evident in her work: organization and chaos; light and darkness; pleasure and distress; full and empty; heaven and hell… dualities at the service of a piece of work that is beyond the format and is continuously expanding to three-dimensionality.
The current exhibition includes a selection of recent work carried out in recent years and follows a structured through the different series, organized into seven areas.
A rigorous work, honest and consistent, that of Vall Palou’s, who makes no concession and invites us to enjoy enriching our sensations by deepening impressions. A work that claims the intentions of the look and leaves in the perception of the viewer different exercises that can be done through memory, tracing, poetic reflection, fictitious permanence, space of dreams and… we enhance what Marcel Duchamp defended by asserting that the observer makes the work.
Conchita Oliver
Art historian and member of the International Association of Art Critics
Heir to the tradition of in-formalism and of abstract expressionism, she does not avoid any expressive formula to explore and investigate a great variety of registers: painting, engraving, drawing, artist books and ceramics. Different art language which she use every opportunity to achieve the results of desired expression. With a silent solo career, developed through a strictly abstract language, Vall Palou has carried out a thoughtful exercise of subjective interpretation of the feelings with strength and boldness of resources that do not hide at any time her introspective side.
The re-vindication of painting and its discourse goes from the Gestural to the Material, going through the Spatial and Stainism. In spaces without limits, which she usually executes in large formats, her impulsive and dynamic practice responds to her most energetic concerns that gush with total freedom of execution. She leaves aside all that is superfluous and keeps hold of the pulse and gesture, the way of the pigment, the transit of the mark of the brush, the length of the stroke on the canvas, the accumulation of density, of drippings… on which are successively superimposed, overlapping and merging till it establishes a framework and a pictorial grid made of subtle contributions and sedimentations. Its own energetic cadence gives it a vibration that offers its interior pulse, which is so characteristic of her work.
Veritable labyrinths that allows us to visually travel through its interior, from the surface to its compact depths and converse with its most intimate secrets that often pip through cracks of light. In the present compositions, colour takes centre stage and its ranges are bright and impressive: green, blue, red, black and white, particularly becoming energetic vibrations. Also, spaces with atmospheric moods, made of glazes and transparencies, and seek dialogue with compact mass and fields of monochrome colour that accurately compensates space constructively.
A study of an indisputable pictorial claim interrelated to a single whole. A battle that the artist maintains with her work, superimposing, juxtaposing, coming together… until the work itself no longer asks for anything more and surrenders. This confrontation, however, admits no insecurities, doubts or retreats because this battle is only won by hard discipline, reflection and demand in the method and in the process. On the other hand, she would not impose her will over the work till she has completely defeating it and making it hers. A large visual and tactile expansion of great aesthetic pleasure, where the profusion and abundance of accidents involving a great plastic forcefulness and evocative lyricism, between the power of emotion and mind control. An emotion that gradually leaks through the entire process of execution, a passion that has been rationalizing and slowly altering from the first instinctive impulse.
But in contrast, there are other works that are the product of a much more direct action that emerge as completely fluid and impulsive without a sum of consecutive experiences. They are like visions or microscopic cellular organisms multiplying in a corpuscular expansion of constant evolution.
With pictorial practice Vall Palou has made the claims of non-figurative art not as a limitation, but, on the contrary, as an imposition. Mental landscapes that are the result of an introspective processes, full of internal demands, criticisms, ideas and personal challenges that become the reflection of the most vital points of herself. Some canvases, within a substantial pictorial abstraction, at all times confirm the link established between the self and the environment.
In this sense, her work expresses the deepest feelings of man: satisfactions, frustrations, pain, joy… through roughness of texture, the vaporisation of a transparency, stabilizing organization, disestablishing structure, sequential rhythms of extreme verticality, the dissolution and liquidity of the painting; the hardness of a black, the depth of a blue, the overwhelming strength of a red or the infinite purity a white. Regardless of all accessories that offer the purest essential universality, that is, the intimate question of the world. A repertoire of formal energy released in an explosion of nuances and registers that enhance the metaphorical force that allows everyone to evoke his own imaginary world.
This entire process is referred to the support of canvas but it is much more magnified in the case of papers. The radical spontaneity, automatism and gestures reach the maximum impact, above all because since the same technique offers much more freedom and allows, above all, immediacy. Vall Palou’s paintings on paper are direct, of the first intention and thus preserve the freshness of the first ray. It is a privileged language of direct expression, constant experimentation, a vehicle that allows ductile autonomy of action difficult to achieve in painting on canvas. All this constitutes a kind of personal laboratory, the artist’s much more intimate space, the instant download between mind and hand flowing rapidly on the surface; in short, the means which wins the battle of time. For Vall Palou, this practice is a genuine writing of her thoughts, an exercise that allows her to follow the traces of her emotional swings and each individual moment within the set of her work.
Moreover, Vall Palau’s raku pottery, of dry and rough skin, talks with a series of black paintings of spectral depth. The Voice of pottery – the ancestral art of clay and fire – the possibility to investigate new approaches and new morphologies. A clear determination to experiment, along with practicing good craftsmanship and intricacies of tradition have resulted in a ceramic, which is, above all, a pure art that is conceived as a defence of the material with all its palpitation and its intrinsic qualities. If traditional morphologies have been centred exclusively on the hollow – where it’s utility resides -, limited to shapes that enclose spaces within the classic types, designed to hold something in. Her ceramic pieces are an open expand of creativity in favour of the concept. Transgress the function of deposit and alter formal and conceptual traditional concept means that the ceramic material can be used to create sculptural objects away from orthodox forms like the cliché glasses, plates, bowls or containers that serves some thing.
In Vall Palou’s work a balance of opposites is often manifested that give this point of opposing polarities so evident in her work: organization and chaos; light and darkness; pleasure and distress; full and empty; heaven and hell… dualities at the service of a piece of work that is beyond the format and is continuously expanding to three-dimensionality.
The current exhibition includes a selection of recent work carried out in recent years and follows a structured through the different series, organized into seven areas.
A rigorous work, honest and consistent, that of Vall Palou’s, who makes no concession and invites us to enjoy enriching our sensations by deepening impressions. A work that claims the intentions of the look and leaves in the perception of the viewer different exercises that can be done through memory, tracing, poetic reflection, fictitious permanence, space of dreams and… we enhance what Marcel Duchamp defended by asserting that the observer makes the work.
Conchita Oliver
Art historian and member of the International Association of Art Critics