Marcet and Vila-Abadal say on their website: “The process of creation and preparation of our work is the result of the teamwork of the two: our work methodology is: two thoughts + communication + debate = materialization at four hands of each work “.
The artists, invited by María Bofill to this exhibition, which revolves around this renowned artist, are particularly concerned about the artistic process, the influence of the environment in which they usually live – the rural area near Vic -, the concept, the idea that, after a joint work, is reflected in works, installations, performances. When conceptualism emerged and spread in the 60s and 70s, our artists were already interested in its postulates. In fact, conceptualism arises as a reaction to the formalism that, among others, Greenberg had defended. Since then everything has been interrelated. Marcet and Vila-Abadal have considered that their artistic creativity is based on ceramics, but their approaches also include painting, sculpture, music, design and everything that serves to express an idea, an approach. We also start from the concern for technique, for materials, for the power of fire, for beauty, for the color that artists always have. But again, the idea is more important than the object or its physical representation. The idea of the work prevails over its formal aspects, leaving the resolution of the work as mere support.
Marcet and Vila-Abadal consider that, when they began to stain their hands with clay or porcelain, they concretized their works more and were more historized, but that, with time, they have become more abstract and simpler in the sense that said Mies Van der Rohe that less is more. Rosa is more a sculptor and Jordi is more a painter. In his most recent works there is a great concern for life, creativity, nature, the evolution of people. In “Orígens” they resorted to Genesis to capture in different phases, the darkness, the emergence of plant life, the splendor of nature, the birth of man, the emergence of the group and, finally, the feelings, the emotions, the love, religion, faith and beliefs, progress, cultures. In short, the discovery of ourselves. The development of the concept was based on different elements and the repetition of fingers, faces, a kind of tiles that fit together and everything that serves to the surprise development of the message.
As good conceptualists, and knowing that the word and the text form or can be part of creativity, Marcet and Vila-Abadal explain their processes. In “Encaix”, a 42-minute video, they show their artistic concerns, their social concerns, their ways of working, their workshop and their way of working. We know that they prepare the ductile kaolin to obtain the most malleable porcelain, they prepare their own colors and the ranges of them, cut the pieces that later have to be embedded to form a sculpture, a painting or a pinto-sculpture, the process of glazing, the oven and after the project, the drawing and the idea will be composing the paintings that in that video were about fog, sea, ice, grass, earth, fire, night, light . Phenomena that configure a way of life in a specific place. The fit of the pieces, as a tesserae of a mosaic or taraceas of a piece of furniture, accommodated the idea of stillness, of ascent, of strength, of calmness. The color was adapted to what was required. Red-fire, ice-white, sea-blue, night-black, etc.