Rooms 1, 2 & 3
STELLA RAHOLA MATUTES
— BABELIA & OTHER STORIES
“I looked at my hands as a work was taking shape.
The more it was complete, the more I saw my obedience in it (...). Because the world gives us our works as it has given us our hands.”
Perejaume, poem 7 from “Els fets geogràfics” (The geographical facts), in Obreda, Barcelona, Edicions 62, 2018.
Stella Rahola Matutes (Barcelona, 1980) communicates with materials in an almost mystical way. Her hands come into contact with various textures and articulate movements, until forms that flirt with magic emerge. With a degree in architecture from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona) and another in sculpture from the Escola Massana (Barcelona), she is currently carrying out a Masters in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London.
Her way of understanding artistic expression goes beyond the obvious, and numerous experiences and trips to Asia, the United States and Europe contribute to here wide and meticulous gaze. Rahola Matutes combines the traditional techniques of porcelain, glass and photography with theoretical knowledge in relation to contemporary artistic practice and architecture—her first formative experience was with Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, known for his sensual materiality.
To discover Stella Rahola Matutes’ work is an invitation to delight in her expansive sensibility. A virtue that is part innate and part acquired, and that grants a genuine personality to her work, in which delicacy and strength dance to the rhythm of an exquisite intuition.
Heiress to an environment in which aesthetics and balance are part of everyday life—her mother is an interior designer and her father is an architect—, she furrows her own path with a dedication typical of passionate personalities, and guided by an intellect that continually questions its surroundings.
This exhibition, curated by Glòria Bosch and Mercè Vila Rigat, is structured in three areas.
In the easternmost space of the room we find Antropologia del paisatge and Porcelain Walls, two installations that bear an autobiographical stamp, although it may not seem so at first. Dozens of tiles accompany three walls that bring us closer to the characteristic texture of lime covered walls; porcelain taken to the limit, cooked at 1,240 °C, just before breaking point, are the materials and techniques used by the artist to speak of the textures of the traditional constructions on the white island of Ibiza. Pieces prepared in Switzerland after an intense period of learning in China. All in all, an ode to her mother’s origins.
In the next room we find two artworks of very different materials that engage with each other based on the geometric figure of a circle: Shui (‘water’ in Chinese) and Les Nymphéas. The former consists of two pieces of steel, created in China, and subjected to the will of the artist to imitate the movement of water. The latter consists of circles of variable sizes made of glass powder: a reinterpretation of those legendary water lilies by Monet, with the aim of granting them an imagined texture of lunar crust.
Finally, Babelia, Babel and Skyline rise up as protagonists of the last space. The pieces that cover the floor are made of glass blown by the artist herself. The intention: to offer us a contemporary architectural landscape while also exposing its limitations.
Modern buildings are fitted with ample windows that give light and transparency to buildings that compete to offer the best aesthetic option. But they also present significant limitations and a considerable loss of humanity. That is why we find the pieces of broken glass scattered everywhere, as a representation of imperfect architecture.
Rahola Matutes recovers traditional techniques such as cyanotype, with which she created her Skyline piece, and the collodion process, used to produce Souvenirs from Babelia. Babelia & Other Stories is a statement of intent in which the subtlety, elegance and strength of the traditionally worked materials look towards the past to reclaim a broader and more inclusive present.