Marina Herlop, an amazing musician for the "Barcelona valors afegits" project.

I discovered Marina Herlop on YouTube, in a recording from years ago where she explains, in tears, when she was a teenager, and after a failed piano audition: "music is not made for that, you know, music is not made for auditions, nor to get nervous, nor to feel shitty.... If I had known this, I wouldn't have done music".

Well, luckily she kept going, because Marina has managed to create a strong, original and surprising work, wrapped in a disturbing, delicate and beautiful aesthetic.

I photograph her on a torrid August afternoon, at her place in the Guinardó neighborhood, where she has her recording studio. While we were moving keyboards and chairs to make some space, two rabbits strolled quietly around the room, adding a surreal touch to the scene.

Marina Herlop has released two solo albums, Nanook and Babasha and she is the vocalist and keyboard player of the band Myōboku. She stands out for her style of fusion between classicism and avant-garde, and for using an invented language in the lyrics of her songs.

Herlop is part of the musical project Myōboku together with Oscar Garrobé. The group's style has been defined as unusual and unclassifiable, with influences ranging from space-funk to psychedelic jazz, avant-garde, art-pop or afro-beat.

Marina Herlop

multistudio BOOKS presents the new collection 12 PRINTS

On July 1st multistudio BOOKS presented in Barcelona its new collection 12 PRINTS. These are packages containing 12 DIN A6 reproductions in digital offset i a limited edition of 20.

The presentation was held at the Espai d'art Atelier Güell, with the presence of several of the authors who have contributed to the collection.

Toni Ricart participates in 12 PRINTS with 3 titles: Walk in a dream, Fragile and the illustrations pack la Floresta.

Enrique Gracián, mathematician and science divulgator, a new portrait for the Barcelona VA project.

Arriving at Enrique Gracián's house, I ask him about a doubt that I had while reading Construir el mundo (Constructing the World), his latest book. I tell him that I understand that an animal or a plant acts to be able to eat or reproduce, and, speaking of elementary particles I can also understand that two atoms negotiate between them to form a compound, but the reason for this fact escapes me. He answers me that they do it because they can, and that it does not make much sense to ask the why of everything at these levels; we would be entering the realms of metaphysics.

He then makes the following reflection: "I make an analogy with humans. The inner world would be the core. The inner world is that part of our being to which only we (as individuals) have access and in order to establish relationships with the other we have to negotiate. No matter if it is a friendship, love or business relationship, there is always a negotiation.
In the world of physics nuclei only touch each other when a nuclear reaction takes place, be it in a reactor, in an atomic bomb or in stellar synthesis. This always results in the transformation of one element into a different one, as, for example, when hydrogen is transformed into helium.
At this point, analogies in the human sphere become mere fantasies. In the religious realm it is when the divine nature is reached (communion) and in more earthly terms, it would be the possibility of a sexual relationship in which the union of the inner worlds would take place in a kind of nuclear reaction that would give rise to the appearance of a new being. To me, this is a thought that is more amusing than interesting."

Gracián has the gift of transmitting his knowledge with simplicity and with a certain dose of humor and irony. Listening to him is always a pleasure, and you always learn new things, or, at least, seen from a new point of view.

Enrique Gracián, who holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Barcelona, has a long history as a teacher in various academic fields, an activity from which he derived a clear vocation for popular science, which he has demonstrated in collaborations in the science supplements of La Vanguardia and El País, as well as in other popular science publications. He was deputy director of the TVE program Redes. He is also the creator of the SANGAKOO method (an innovative system for the teaching of mathematics) and the BOURBAKI project (mathematical method for the treatment of information in business organizations). His publications include the biographies of Von Neumann and Hooke, as well as the mathematical popularization books El Infinito, un descubrimiento sin fin and Los números primos, el largo camino hacia el infinito, translated into more than fourteen languages.

Tere Guix, another designer portrait for Barcelona Valors Afegits

Tere welcomes me at her home in the Gracia neighborhood. We look at some of her drawings, perfectly organized in folders. These are images that move from the delicacy of fine pen lines to more vigorous gouaches and watercolors. From delicate portraits of Bauhaus heroines to expressive ape faces, interpretations of erotic Japanese shunga prints, or simple kitchen objects drawn in an almost naive style. And everything very classified, clean and tidy, like the space where she works, like all the work she does as a graphic designer: neat, concise and effective.

Tere Guix has a degree in Biology and a PhD in Medicine. In 1990 she decided she needed a change and studied graphic design at the school of art and design Eina in Barcelona. She worked in the studios of Carme Vives and America Sanchez.

In 1994 she studied digital communication at ETC, Stockholm, and also the Swedish language. In 1998 she founded ETC in Barcelona and in 2004 she set up her own graphic design office, which still continues.

She is very interested in drawing and started to delve into it through the Club del Dibujo that she co-founded with 9 other art, design and photography professionals.

Over the years Tere has been teaching design at Eina, BAU and Escola de la Moda and drawing at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc.

Tere Guix website

12 PRINTS, new collection by multistudio BOOKS

multistudio BOOKS launches its new collection 12 PRINTS, with works of photography, graphic art and illustration by 10 different artists. They are limited series of packs with 12 reproductions.

I have taken the opportunity to publish my collections "Walk in a dream", "Fragile" and a series of illustrations "la Floresta".

Check them at multistudio BOOKS

Oscar Tusquets, architect, painter, designer and writer. New portrait for Barcelona V.A.

When I met Oscar Tusquets years ago, to design his first website, I was fascinated by his work, as an architect, but especially as a painter. Then I read his books and I liked the way he structures and explains his reflections. Eduardo Mendoza sums it up very well in a prologue: "what Tusquets proposes to us is a way of seeing and appreciating things so simple and so vital that it takes us by surprise and to the point that it shakes our habits and questions our criteria, it is stimulating to the highest degree".
Tusquets receives me in his house, with a kindness and courtesy that makes me feel at home immediately. I find him in great shape, at 80 years old, awake, witty, very attentive to the conversation as we talk, especially about photography and books. I guess he is a good talker, because apart from always contributing with a different and erudite vision, he leaves space for others and is interested in all opinions.

Architect by formation, designer by adaptation, painter by vocation and writer by desire to win friends, Oscar Tusquets Blanca is the prototype of the integral artist that the specialization of the modern world has led progressively to the extinction.
Graduated in architecture in 1965, after working in the studio of Federico Correa and Alfonso Milà, he created Studio Per with Lluís Clotet, Pep Bonet and Cristian Cirici. He has been assistant professor to the Chair of Projects of the ETSAB and has given lectures and workshops at universities in the United States and Europe. In 1983 he was named Life Patron of the Gala Salvador Dalí Foundation at the explicit wish of the Master. In 1987 he founded with Carlos Díaz Oscar Tusquets Blanca Arquitecturas with which he carried out projects in Spain, France, Holland and Japan. Since 2008 he works practically alone or with the sporadic help of young collaborators trained in his studio.
As a designer he is a founding partner of BD Barcelona Design where he started as a designer of furniture and objects. He has worked mainly for Italian, German and Spanish companies. Some of his pieces are part of the collections of museums such as the MoMA in New York or the Georges Pompidou in Paris.
As a painter he has exhibited in national and international galleries. In 2003 he publishes the book of art Anna (RqueR editorial), and in 2015 one of erotic painting, Hot Days (Umberto Allemandi & Co).
In 1994 he revealed himself as an essayist with Más que discutible (Tusquets Editores); since then he has published a dozen more books, in addition to articles and texts for other publications and for the press.

Among other distinctions, he has received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, the National Design Award, the Palme de Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Creu de Sant Jordi. In addition, he has two Premis Ciutat de Barcelona, and several FAD of Architecture and Delta of Design awards.

Hélène Gélinas, one more painter for "Barcelona Valors Afegits"

Portraying someone very close to me is difficult because it is difficult to abstract oneself and take distance. In the case of Hélène it has been even more complicated because for many years, she is the person with whom I share my life, that is to say, everything.

I portray her in her studio, a luminous space where she spends hours and hours working and also studying, because one of the qualities of Hélène is her thirst for knowledge, be it art, history, mythology, philosophy, physics, astronomy or the botanical sciences.

While she is moving easels and frames to make room, I think about how her painting has evolved since I met her in Seville in the early 90s. She has been perfecting her line, the treatment of color, without ever ceasing to look for resources and solutions. And the result is a realistic style, perfectionist but fresh, with a remarkable technical mastery, but away from any fashion trend, and with a special concern for the composition, surely the result of her background as a graphic designer.

Born in Shawinigan (Quebec), Hélène Gélinas studied graphic design in California and Australia, painting in Seville with Jesús Alcántara, and pictorial restoration in Barcelona. This combination of different disciplines and geographical locations is reflected in her work.

She has exhibited her paintings in Montreal, Seville, Barcelona, Estartit, Sabadell, Anglet (France) and Sant Cugat.

New portrait: Xavi Bou, a great photographer, for BCN VA.

Xavi receives me in his studio in the neighborhood of Gracia. I tell him again my admiration for his work, since the first time I saw one of his magnificent ornithographs. We talk about his photographs and the complex world of the art market. I guess he is much more comfortable with his camera patiently waiting for a flock of starlings in the field than discussing with gallery owners and collectors. He talks passionately about the behavior of birds. How one day he stopped the car when he discovered a group of cranes flying in a "V", which inexplicably ended up flying in circles, like vultures, creating a beautiful ellipse in the sky. Or how the starlings alter their trajectories because of the threatening appearance of a raptor.
I am glad to know that he does not want to become "the-photographer-who-portrays-the-traces-of-birds-flying" and wants to continue exploring other forms and contents, always mixing his devotion to nature with his great ability to create visual poetry based on light and movement.

Xavi Bou has a degree in Geology from the University of Barcelona. In 2004 he completed his photography studies at the International School of Photography Grisart, and during the following decade, Xavi worked in the advertising and fashion sector combining it with teaching photography.
In 2012 he started his project Ornitographies; photography inspired by his curiosity for the invisible patterns traced by birds in flight, which quickly attracted the attention of international publications and collectors, and since then his work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Geo and Sonntag, among many others. Xavi has exhibited Ornithographs in Australia, Holland, USA, Spain, Switzerland, France, Russia and Greece.

xavibou.com

Art gallerist Rocío Santa Cruz, for BCN VA.

In 2014, returning from Brazil, I curated a retrospective exhibition of my uncle Marcel Giró in Badalona, his hometown. Then I looked for a place with enough entity to do another one in Barcelona and I only received excuses, evasions or silences from the main galleries and museums of the city. Only Rocío was immediately interested, demonstrating that she knew how to value a work as forceful as Giró's, overcoming the prejudices and cronyism so common in the art world and institutions. Since then, Rocío has shown Giró's and Palmira Puig's work all over the world, and has organized remarkable exhibitions at her gallery on Gran Vía.

Rocío Santa Cruz moves with a lot of experience and astuteness in the art world. She knows everyone and knows how and when to play each piece to win the game. That is why she has collected so many successes and has turned her gallery into an essential reference of contemporary art and photography worldwide.

We spend many hours together in my studio reviewing the Giró y Puig archive, and there I realize that, beyond organizing exhibitions and traveling to fairs around the world, Rocío's true passion is research: immersing herself in hundreds of contact sheets, negatives and documents of all kinds to reconstruct stories.

Not forgetting her other great passion, books, which has led her to create ArtsLibris, currently one of the most important fairs in the sector.

In 2014, returning from Brazil, I curated a retrospective exhibition of my uncle Marcel Giró in Badalona, his hometown. Then I looked for a place with enough entity to do another one in Barcelona and I only received excuses, evasions or silences from the main galleries and museums of the city. Only Rocío was immediately interested, evidencing that she knew how to value a work as powerful as Giró's, overcoming the prejudices and cronyism so common in the world of art and institutions. Since then, Rocío has shown Giró's and Palmira Puig's work all over the world, and has organized remarkable exhibitions at her gallery on Gran Vía Avenue in Barcelona.

Rocío Santa Cruz moves with a lot of expertise and astuteness in the art world. She knows everyone and knows how and when to play each piece to win the game. That is why she has collected so many successes and has turned her gallery into an essential reference of contemporary art and photography worldwide.

We spend many hours together in my studio reviewing the Giró and Puig archive, and there I realize that, beyond organizing exhibitions and traveling to fairs around the world, Rocío's true passion is research: diving into the hundreds of contact sheets, negatives and documents of all kinds to reconstruct stories.

Not forgetting her other great passion, books, which has led her to create ArtsLibris, currently one of the most important fairs in the sector.

Rocío Santa Cruz, founder and CEO of ArtsLibris, studied at the École Estienne in Paris and is also the initiator of the publishing label Raíña Lupa, created in the French capital in 1994 and moved to Barcelona in 2002. Involved in the world of gallerism for years, since 2015 she has been running the gallery that bears her same name in Barcelona. 

The interconnection between art and literature, through various projects such as the edition of illustrated books, and the curatorship of exhibitions -such as Leer imágenes: el archivo fotográfico de Julio Cortázar and La palabra y su sombra, José Ángel Valente- constitute her main interests. In her activity as a gallery owner, her focuses of interest are photography, experimental cinema and the edition of artist's books, and she conceives the gallery as a container of ideas, a space for discussion and dissemination of contemporary artistic practices.

RocioSantaCruz

Designer Laura Meseguer, for BCN VA.

Laura exudes a contagious enthusiasm. She shows me some of her recent work, we talk about friends and common places, and while I set up the camera she hurries to tidy up her table, which, to me, is not cluttered at all. I read this same neatness in her way of posing and dressing, the same one that can be seen on the screen, in the image of the typography she is designing.

Laura Meseguer is a designer and teacher specialized in editorial design and custom typography design, from a monogram to a complete alphabet.
She studied at Llotja and started in the profession working in several advertising agencies and studios. Since 1992 she has been a member of the typographic collective Type-Ø-Tones, from where she distributes and promotes her typefaces. In 2003-2004 she was a student at Type & Media and obtained a Master's degree in typography design at the KABK in The Hague, The Netherlands.
She is the author of TypoMag, Tipografía en las revistas, and, together with Cristóbal Henestrosa and José Scaglione, co-author of the book Cómo crear tipografías. Del boceto a la pantalla.
Member of the board of ATypI since 2017. Gráffica Award 2018.

Laura Meseguer web site
Type-Ø-Tones web site