Txema Salvans, new portrait for "BARCELONA, retrats de proximitat"

A few minutes after entering Txema's house I could already see that we speak the same language, and that it was going to be a profitable session. Txema has very clear ideas and explains them with enthusiasm, whether in conversation or, above all, with his photographs. He masterfully documents the dystopia in which we are already immersed, with a touch of humor, but also of mischief. His work is, without a doubt, a valuable document of the times we are living in.

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Txema Salvans (Barcelona, 1971) is a Catalan photographer who, for the past two decades, has developed a documentary and artistic approach outside the standard photojournalist platforms, including photoessay.
Joan Fontcuberta has described his work as a “balancing critical thinking with a poetic sense of humor”. His book project Nice To Meet You (2005) received the 2015 Photo España award for the best photobook. The Waiting Game (2014) explores the necessity of desire and prostitution along the Mediterranean coastline of Spain and was awarded as the best Iberoamerican photobook.
My Kingdom was published by MACK in 2018. Perfect Day is the latest project published by MACK.
Txema Salvans' work has been published by leading international media including Le Monde, Suddeustsche Zeitung Magazine, Stern, New York Times, Welt der Frau, NZZ, Liberation, Monocle, Colors, Big Mag, Vice, Marie Claire, GQ France, Elephen, Britsh Journal of Photography, Wallpaper, I-D Magazine, Matador and El País Semanal.
He has recently exhibited his work at Centre D'Art Contemporani Arts Santa Mònica, Museum of Contemporary Art Hamburg, Museum fur photographie Braunschweig and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Reina Sofía.

Txema Salvans website

Alba Armengou, new portrait for "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat".

Alba is like a member of the family. She is a good friend of my son's and at home we have been fans of hers for years. She explains to me, enthusiastic, the new stage she is living: she leaves the Sant Andreu Jazz Band and starts a new project with the guitarist Vicente López, with an album included.
Alba speaks with the same delicacy with which she sings jazz standards or bossa nova and with the softness of her splendid trumpet solos. I ask her how she feels more comfortable, whether singing or playing the trumpet and she answers that, although they are different things, both allow her to express herself musically. Maybe singing -she tells me- I reach more people. The trumpet is more exclusive...

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"I was born on July 7, 2001. At the age of three I started studying music theory at the Conservatori del Liceu, and later, at the age of six, I began studying trumpet. In 2009 I entered the Institut Escola Artístic Oriol Martorell and joined the Sant Andreu Jazz Band, directed by Joan Chamorro, where shortly after I started singing. From the age of fourteen to sixteen I was part of the JONC (National Youth Orchestra of Catalonia). In 2018 I presented my first album as a co-leader with Joan Chamorro. A year later I began higher studies in jazz trumpet at ESMUC (Catalonia High School of Music).
In 2020, after the COVID confinement, I started a musical project with the guitarist Vicente López, which will result in what will be my first album under my name with my own compositions.
In recent years I have also been part of projects such as the Valparaiso Clasijazz Big band directed by Miho Hazama, the Barcelona Art Orquestra directed by Lluís Vidal and the Orquestra de Músiques d'Arrel de Catalunya directed by Dani López. Also throughout my career I have participated in more than 40 recordings where I have been able to collaborate with musicians such as Joel Fram, Jessie Davis, Scott Robinson, Joe Magnarelli, Perico Sambeat, Scott Hamilton, Dick Oatts, among many others.."

New site for the "BARCELONA retrats de proximitat" projecT

With the 80 portraits project almost finished, and starting to work on the book layout, I created a website to preview the work.

You can check it here.

Portrait session with our Canadian nephews and nieces

It's already becoming a tradition: when we have visitors at home, we end up doing a long and fun portrait session.

New portrait: musician and visual artist Josep-Maria Balanyà, for "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat".

The music of Josep-Maria Balanyà should be listened to with predisposition and attention, because it is complex and stirs up hidden registers. It is a music that is difficult, but at the same time honest. I ask him if he follows a specific pattern when he improvises. He sits down at the piano and shows me an example, playing a base of intervals of fifths and ninths, on which he creates and undoes tensions and rhythms, with the confidence of someone who perfectly masters a strange language and knows how to use it to communicate and express himself.
Balanyà is kind, attentive and very expressive. I photograph him in his bright studio in the neighborhood of Raval, a few days before he returns to Brussels, the city he shares with Barcelona as his place of residence.
Observing how he moves and how he speaks, one can understand the statement that "his concerts are energetic rituals - one could say that he plays the piano with his whole body - where one can perceive the presence of music made matter."

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Josep-Maria Balanyà is a pianist, composer, improvisational orchestra conductor, sound artist, painter and photographer. With more than 40 years of work on stage, 25 recorded albums and more than 140 works, his career ranges from classical music and jazz to improvisation, experimental acoustic art and performance, fields in which he enjoys high international recognition. Balanyà explores the limits of music in his compositions and performances. He is particularly interested in the combination of different arts and the transfer of art to music.
He studied painting and printmaking at the European Academy of Fine Arts in Trier, Germany. His pictorial production focuses on abstract paintings with mixed techniques, and acrylic on canvas.
His photographic work has followed a process that goes from pictorialism, to direct photography, street photography, macro technique, the study of the human body and movement.
Regarding his main field, music, Balanyà has studied in Barcelona and Switzerland (Swiss Jazz School and Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Bern), has attended composition seminars with Helmut Lachenmann, Ivan Fedele and Walter Zimmermann, and improvisation workshops with Borah Bergman in New York. He has done intensive research on nature sounds in Mexico, working with oceanographers and biologists, including mastozoologist Bernardo Villa.
Most of his works have a significant improvisational part. His works as a solo pianist combine the pure sound of the instrument with prepared or manipulated piano techniques. He has presented several multimedia projects for piano, voice, real-time electronics, video, Butoh dance, as well as pieces for percussion on sculptures, sound objects and fine arts utensils. He has worked with leading musicians, including Joachim Kühn, Hans Koch, Claudio Pontiggia, Carlos Zingaro, Michiel Borstlap, Walter Quintus, Ksenija Lukic, Hannah Marshall, Das Neue Ensemble Hannover, Americo Rodrigues, Paul Rogers, Mark Sanders, Ramón López, Hannah Mi (dance), Ulrich Mitzlaff, Mimi Barthélemy, among others.

Balanyà’s web site.

Albert Martin, new portrait for the project "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat"

Albert has been my cello teacher for several years now and I thank him for his useful lessons and his great patience towards me. Both in his classes and when he conducts us in the chamber ensemble, he knows how to transmit his criteria with effective conviction and always with a touch of almost British humor, probably inherited from his student days in Cardiff and London.

Albert Martin began his musical studies at the Escolania de la Catedral de Barcelona. Subsequently, he studied cello at the Luthier School and later at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff and Trinity College of Music in London.
He is currently a member of the Sant Cugat Symphony Orchestra and the Manfred Quartet of Barcelona.
Since 2014 he has been conducting the OCA, a string orchestra formed by amateur musicians.

New portrait for "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat": multimedia artist Mariona Omedes.

MARIONA OMEDES, multimedia artist.

Mariona welcomes me in the Marina neighborhood, at the digital art studio nueve ojos, of which she is co-founder, where they make memorable productions from spectacular mappings on city façades, audiovisuals for exhibitions, animations for films to the scenography of the Goya Awards gala. A sign on the wall sums up the atmosphere at nueve ojos: Creativity is my weapon.
She explains that she wanted to be a painter and went to London to study art. And how an encounter with the much-missed Pepo Sol, showing her a digital animation, made her change her mind and marked her professional future. Since then -she tells me- she has worked a lot, maybe even too much. But she has also enjoyed it a lot, because she is passionate about what she does.

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Mariona Omedes is a multimedia artist, trained as a painter, graphic designer and illustrator. Her artistic qualities let her participate in audiovisual projects of a distinctive cultural nature, and her knowledge and concerns, in developing audiovisual communication.
She specializes in postproduction and applies it in the direction of documentaries, event direction, audiovisuals for museums, large screenings, film postproduction, credits and all kinds of disciplines that require audiovisuals. She developed her knowledge working for ten years (1989-1999) at the digital postproduction company Oframe, which she ended up directing.
In 2011 she received the National Culture Award of Catalonia granted by CoNCA, in the audiovisual category.
She currently directs nueve ojos, a visual creativity studio that was born in May 2008 in Barcelona.

nueve ojos site

Comic book artist Laura Pérez Vernetti, for "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat".

I met Laura when we were both studying Fine Arts in Barcelona, in the mid-seventies. Years later we met again when she started drawing for the magazine El Víbora and I was in charge of production and design.
She receives me at her studio in Ciutat Vella, full of books and brushes, and we remember old times, of course, and common friends.
Laura speaks with the same confidence and determination that can be seen in her drawings. Strong lines, but delicate and clean, that perfectly illustrate the fears, pleasures, beauty and passions that feed her characters.

> Laura Pérez Vernetti has a degree in Fine Arts, is a comic author, illustrator and photographer. As a comic author she has drawn stories with her own scripts and has worked with scriptwriters such as Onliyú, J. M. Lo Duca, Carlos Sampayo, Antonio Altarriba and, above all, Felipe Hernández Cava.
During the 80's she published her comics in the magazine El Víbora.
She has published, among other albums: El toro blanco, with script by J.M. Lo Duca, Markheim by R. L. Stevenson, Las habitaciones desmanteladas in which he adapts literary works such as Maupassant, De Quincey, Dylan Thomas, etc., Macandé, with script by Hernández Cava, Las mil y una noches, adapted by Lo Duca, No Ballena, tales by Saki, Susana with her own script, Amores Locos and El brillo del gato negro, both with script by Antonio Altarriba, and Sarà servito, with script by Felipe Hernández Cava.
She has adapted to the comic language literature and poets such as Dostoyevski, Hawthorne, Marcel Schwob, Kafka, Joyce, Saki, Aristotle, Apuleius, De Quincey, Dylan Thomas, Maupassant, Stevenson, Pessoa, Maiakoski, among others.
Pioneer author in the new genre of Graphic Poetry, for ten years she has published nine comics of this new language, with the publishers Luces de Gálibo and Reino de Cordelia.
In 2019 she publishes the graphic novel Las vidas imaginarias de Schwob, an adaptation in the language of comics of the masterpiece of the French writer Marcel Schwob.
She is currently working on a graphic novel scripted by Javier Pérez Andújar.
She has published her work in France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Sweden, England, Germany, Mexico and Portugal.
In 2017 she received the Trueno de Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement at the XX Jornadas del Cómic almeriense.
In 2018 she received the Grand Prize at the 36 Saló Internacional del Cómic de Barcelona awarded "to a career in which Laura Pérez Vernetti has always bet on groundbreaking comics that seek new aesthetic and narrative forms".

Jordi Tolosa, sculptor of ideas, for "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat".

I know Jordi's work since we met in the seventies at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and at that time I was already fascinated by the way he explained the world, his wise irony, but above all the exigency he has always shown when it comes to materialising it all, to sculpting ideas. Because although he masters the materials and how to work them, Jordi does not stop at the search for shapes and volumes, which he does too, but goes further and twists the contents and the continents, forcing the viewer to participate in a totally unusual dialogue, which can range from a tense provocation to the calmest and most reflective introspection. And always with impeccable execution.

"My work is close to meaning and reflection on concepts and ideas. Recurring aspects are life, time and the death of the individual".
Born in Badalona one summer night in October 1956.
Studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. Began his first works and actions in the street at the end of the seventies, under the influence of conceptual art.
Since 1989 he has exhibited in galleries and museums in Badalona, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Girona, Hannover, Madrid, Bonn, Strasbourg, Reus, Valencia, Lleida, Valls, Tarragona, Palafrugell, Santander, Terrassa, Sant Cugat, among others.
He has received the Plastic Arts Scholarship of the Generalitat (1989), an honorary mention at the Julio Antonio Sculpture Prize (2008) at the Museum of Modern Art of Tarragona, a runner-up prize (2012) at the Tarragona Art Biennial and the Art-FAD prize (2012).

Jordi Tolosa’s web site

Mar Arza, visual artist, new portrait for "Barcelona, retrats de proximitat"

Mar Arza's studio, in the Nou Barris neighbourhood, is a clean and tidy space, almost aseptic, with a warm and silent light. She tells me about her beginnings, and how, after living in different cities, she returned to Barcelona, where she feels more at home. Mar speaks and moves with the same delicacy that is evident in the work she is doing, neatly arranged on the tables. She gives the impression that she feels more comfortable observing and listening than talking, as if she prefers to reserve explanations and words for her work.

> Mar Arza is a visual artist trained in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Valencia and at the Carnegie Mellon School of Art, Pittsburgh, USA. She later studied a Master's degree in Sculpture at Winchester School of Art, in the UK. The approach to the Anglo-Saxon education system, both in Great Britain and in the USA, results in a higher level of autonomy in professional practice.
She participates in solo and group exhibitions (Barcelona, Valencia, Castelló, Palma, Madrid, Brussels and London) and attends several art fairs (Arcomadrid, ArtBrussels, Untitled Miami, The Solo Project-Basel, ParisPhoto, Drawing Now-Paris, SP Arte-Sao Paulo, Kiaf Contemporary-Seul, ArteLisboa, Estampa, ArteSantander).
The solo exhibition at the RocioSantaCruz Gallery in Barcelona, in 2016, wins the GAC prize for the best emerging artist exhibition, awarded by the guild of galleries and DKV.
In 2018 she presents the project En va, at Sala Miserachs, in La Virreina Centre de la Imagen, curated by Valentín Roma, which explores the mechanisms of vision and concealment that keep control in the shadows.
In 2019, her exhibition Enser, at the Galería Cáñamo in Castelló, reflects on loss and the trace of presence that is prolonged both in the body and in memory.
In 2020, the exhibition Le Hasard Jamais, at the RocioSantaCruz Gallery, acquires the star of monumentality in a game of reflexes that condemns chance subject to a fictitious system of lots.
In 2021, she was awarded the Senyera prize by the València City Council, which recognises and promotes the career of artists linked to the territory.
In 2022 she exhibits at the IVAM, in a project in which her sculptures dialogue with those of Juli González.

Mar Arza web site