Objects of Desire
with Ellen Turner Hall
The artist, artisan and alchemist Beatriz Garrigò celebrates the natural world in her paintings and ceramics at the Tralala Gallery in Collioure.
Her painting, as in so much magic, is not what you see, but the result of hidden operations. An ethereal landscape or still life with fruit and flowers is applied to the surface only after the paper has been prepared with infinite layers of paint – a labour of love and immense patience.
In contrast to the French nature morte or the English still life, Beatriz prefers bodegon in her native Spanish, a term which implies a work full of life like a table overflowing with food and drink. Her grenadines are so many bombs ready to explode into dialogue with the green vase. The clock tower and the chapel of Collioure emerge from a turbulent confluence of water and air.
Raised in a family of collectors of pottery, and after a stint at the Beaux Arts in Barcelona, Beatriz did a course in ceramics to learn about the tools and techniques that would allow her to turn a handful of earth into a pot, a plate, a bowl, or a vase. Something both useful and decorative. The ceramic process is long and demanding of precision. To stop turning and fire a piece at the wrong moment leads to disaster. Each step requires careful observation and touch. “The material dictates. You have to respect the earth,” Beatriz insists.
Beatriz works with clay from La Bisbal. Her ceramic workshop houses her tools, jars of natural pigments, a potter’s wheel, kiln, and shelves of pieces in various stages of the long process of preparation: turned, dried, fired, painted, fired again, and enameled before a final firing. Between the discipline imposed by the material and the freedom of the imagination, lies art. Garrigò’s dark-eyed birds hopping through a tangle of vines are a perfect example of the artist’s mastery of her medium.
is open 11h-13h and 16h-20h. Closed Tuesdays.
In addition, from 4 September to 10 October Beatriz Garrigò has a one-woman show at the Atelier de la Maison de Commerce in Paris.
Friday 27th September 201