With Fora de camp (Out of frame), Fundació Vila Casas aims to promote the artwork by Isidre Manils (Mollet, 1948) by dedicating an exhibition to the artist that encompasses various aspects of his career and intertwines meeting points between the different bases for painting. The artwork by this ‘creator’ of images possesses an ethical commitment to this artistic discipline and, by means of a thorough and concrete methodology, it has become one of the most unique and successful in the country.
His approach focuses on the world of cinema, something he had access to as a child given that his family owned the Ateneo cinema, which was next to their house. The painter’s artwork oscillates between concealment and (dis)concealment, between the absence of a presence and ‘assemblings’ of apparently unconnected images from which he extracts a great sensuality.
Thus, under the glaze of a curtain, behind the velvety fabrics of a dimly lit room, or in the spectral faces that emerge to the surface, Manils’ work highlights more than it shows and obscures more than it reveals. It is a dialectic that indicates meeting points and affinities with the world of cinema: “painting and cinema are the two great arts of the gaze”, asserts the painter, who also points out the similarity of the same shared matter, light. But while cinema tells us stories, Manils is interested in still images, in stillness, the timeless act of its idiosyncrasy. In short, a succession of images that seek to show a world, his world, without any dogmatism, perhaps, in part, because he wants to give us, the public, the ultimate gaze.
Curated by Natàlia Chocarro.
Join our
