The Mallorcan artist Bernardí Roig (Palma, 1965) continues to reap the fruits of a great year.
Parallel to his return to the Madrid gallery circuit (with a show at Max Estrella), he is exhibiting a triple project in Malaga to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death.
When did you know you would be an artist?
In my family home there were no books but there were two encyclopedias: the
Encyclopedia of Sexual Life
and the
Salvat Library of Great Themes
.
In the volume 'Abstract Art and Figurative Art' I saw the image of a Pollock painting for the first time.
My head exploded.
How are the works that you exhibit in Malaga and Madrid are similar and how are they different?
They deal with the same thing with different excuses: they are images that try to show what they are not capable of representing.
Both are an amalgamation of peelings that my head has expelled.
In Malaga the excuse is Picasso, in Madrid the excuse is me.
With what three adjectives would you define your practice?
Obsessive, excessive and contradictory.
Looking back on your work, what have been your recurring obsessions?
I believe that obsessions guarantee that our presence in the world is fulfilled: fear, isolation and loneliness.
What would you say comes first, the substance or the form?
In my case, the form always arrives later, and many times late.
An image is an idea waiting for its flesh, then it becomes the presence of an absence.
What is the nicest thing you have been told about your work?
Pretty?
And the most extravagant?
That it was extravagant, which I thought was ridiculous.
What other people's work of art would you have liked to create?
Any
Corridor
by Bruce Nauman, the most fascinating way to suffocate space.
What little known artist would you recommend?
To Jean Rustin.
Strange French figurative painter of persistent solitudes.
In which museum would you stay to live?
In the Gypsotheca Canoviana Museum, in Possagno, especially in the extension made by Carlo Scarpa.
There the light was caught.
I still feed from the last visit.
What book is open on the nightstand?
Closing
the initial form.
Conversations in Princeton,
by Ricardo Piglia, and about to open and fall into the immensity of
El viaje pendular,
by Cristóbal Serra.
One you couldn't finish?
Contraluz,
by Thomas Pynchon, I got stuck in his excessiveness.
I'll try again though.
Maybe in another pandemic.
What is the movie you have seen the most times?
Otto e mezzo,
by Fellini.
Your favorite dialogue in a movie?
Pontano (Mastroiani): "Life would be bearable if there were no pleasures."
Lidia (Jean Moreau): "Is this sentence yours?"
Pontano: "No.
I no longer have ideas, only memory
.
La Notte,
by Antonioni.
The last series you watched straight away?
I don't watch series, but the last telenovela I saw, and it wasn't in one go because there weren't any jerks yet, was
Yo soy Betty, la fea.
What song would you use as a self-portrait?
At this time, the
Prelude
to
Tristan and Isolde.
What is the historical event that you most admire?
The appearance of Gutenberg's printing press.
What is socially overrated?
Two mistakes: have a positive attitude and be creative.
If he hadn't been an artist he would be...
Surveyor, the one who measures places.
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