Viladecans Viladecans

This work refers directly to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven, the anonymous protagonist of which is thinking of his lost love Leonore when the bird comes into his house to repeat constantly, “Nevermore.” As in Poe’s poem, the atmosphere of the work is dense, but in this case instead of a single discomfiting presence assailing the protagonist/viewer, we have a siege, a claustrophobia created by multiple “nevermores” and, at the centre, a word horizon: a written concept, more mental than real. A supposed horizon imposed over the ravens and the burns, suggesting that the horizon itself is covered in birds.

The medium, an organic filter, gives the work a new dimension, based on decomposition and therefore on the evolution of the work itself. It is a living work about a naturally living concept which evolves over time. Literature becomes an object. We see a clear relationship forged between literature and painting: an ultramarine blue throne, a recurrent colour in the artist’s work, theatrically stages the written concept, that seems to come from a flat bristle brush. Viladecans uses a closed, static composition to present one of his most conceptual projects.

This work follows the same conceptual aesthetics as Literatura-Objecte [Literature-Object] and visualises another of its pillars. The decomposition of the medium created by abrasion of its surface projects an image of premature ageing. Once more the throne, and once more the ultramarine blue. Viladecans leaves traces and symbols, as almost calligraphic signs, an imprint that ties his language together. It is our job to act as graphologists and reveal his graphics. The note located at the top of the throne breaks with the poetics of the image, creating a new unknown, an outside element that acts as a message.

This work recalls an original state of gestation. Like a developing foetus, all the stages, every side and branch, coexist in a timeless developmental space. The leather on which it is created, directly related to skin, makes the gestation process organic. All literary genres are interrelated. White, a pure colour associated in the western world with the creation, illuminates; the geometrical blue gathers together. Also white are the letters of the literature, as well as the knot, which on the one hand is there to be undone and on the other speaks of cohesion. This is therefore a work that directly explains concepts of unification, creation and gestation. Of the birth of thought, not in any single individual but in every one of us.

Viladecans, as an entomologist, a scientist and an observer, immerses himself in everything around him. His inspiration and his reflections come not only from literature but also from everyday life. Studio items creep into his work. An example of this is the work Inventari de l’hort [Inventory of the Garden]. The organic image once again, but this time based on the representation of plants, which almost seem to be taken from a mediaeval scientific notebook. Or even the famous Voynich manuscript, undecipherable but loaded with mystery. The ordinary rubbing shoulders with the enigmatic. The decorative with the scientific, the mundane elevated to the category of the sublime.

The plot of Goethe’s Faust might have some parallels with the artist. In the course of his career he has turned to the character several times, in portrait or written form. A protagonist frustrated by his ignorance of the arts, literature and science who falls back on magic, selling his soul to the devil to gain the eagerly-desired knowledge. We see a dark character, hidden behind the shadows but with a penetrating gaze. The word ànima (soul) is repeated like a mantra throughout the work; it is its currency. The artist/character represented is surrounded by ochres, reds and oranges, a colour scheme that evokes eternal fire or hell. We do not know for sure whether we are looking at a character tormented by an unfair pact or by the knowledge of all that he does not know.

In this work, the paint (generally flat, as in many works by this artist) becomes a three-dimensional element, turns into a tangible concept. Ultramarine, Viladecans’ blue, as the background for creation. Over this, only two elements are stuck: a piece of framework and the written word. Viladecans does not work with artifice, his painting does not fall back on the tradition of the mise-en-scène or set out to deceive in any way. His painting goes a step beyond. Sometimes it paints itself, and when he wants to create three dimensions he does not play with technique, but puts them in directly. Objects that make the painting three-dimensional, turning it into a painting/object.

There is a clear analogy between the work that represents the creation of genres and this one, dedicated to the different genres. Here they come from a nest, from eggs that have been incubated to then hatch out mature. A clear relationship exists between the nest and the eggs superimposed on the painting and the white drawing of the nest and the written name of the different genres. An intricate maze or network forms the base that unifies and coheres all the concepts. Viladecans’ expression and the emphasis he places on the links that exist between painting, literature, poetry, and science are constants. As if all the branches emerged from a central nucleus and were fed by the sap that flows inside them. He creates a map, a tissue of expression that serves as reflection on the one hand and an identifying trait on the other. Viladecans is this complicated neural network and his works are the axons that serve to connect it.

The work of Joan-Pere Viladecans is closely linked to poetry, literature and in some cases poster art. It presents relations that exist between different forms of expression, channels for connection and representation referring at times to literary concepts. His work often reflects subject matter and works from classic literature, through which the artist talks about some chapters of his life or that inspire him in some way. He drinks from Rilke, Thomas Mann and Poe, among others, and in his notebooks, where he prepares all his works, we see an exhaustive imaginary world and a creative process in which every move is perfectly choreographed.