SALAMANCA.- Noah’s Ark, a major exhibition by renowned artist Miquel Barceló, opened today as part of the commemoration of the 8th Centenary of the historic University of Salamanca in Spain.

Featuring approximately 80 works, most of which were created in the last five years, the exhibition spans a diversity of media including painting, sculpture, ceramic, drawing and performance. Noah’s Ark demonstrates the constantly evolving practice of the Majorcan artist, whose vast oeuvre is characterised by a surprisingly formal and iconographic richness. An emphasis on both the creation process, and on metalinguistic reflection are the defining traits of his latest works.

The exhibition is curated in response to the spaces within the University, and the city that it occupies. In a chronological sense, it begins at the Patio de Escuelas Exhibition Hall, displaying the older works in the exhibition: twenty-six watercolours, belonging to a series created by Barceló between 2001 to 2003 to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In the Hospedería Fonseca Hall is a group of large-format paintings and works on paper created from 2009 to 2016, divided into: still lifes that imitate landscapes; white paintings; paintings of the seabed displaying brightly coloured shapes suggesting those of abyssal creatures; and the most recent pieces in the exhibition, relief paintings of the heads of animals that are reminiscent of parietal art.

In the Chapel of the Arzobispo Fonseca Residence Hall is Noah’s Ark (2014), a 4 x 6 m never before seen painting from the artist’s series of still life landscapes, mentioned above. This titular piece can be interpreted as a metaphor for painting as an adventure, and salvation. Also in the Chapel, are a set of 18 ceramic works created between 2012 to 2016, some conforming to traditional shapes of vases, dishes or bricks; they are pierced, cracked, squashed, dented or bent, and finished with layers of colour. Barceló once wrote that for him, ceramics was a form of painting that related to his work; always focused on matter, where images emerge from the viscosity of paint.

The exhibition, supported by Salamanca Town Council, concludes with several monumental sculptures (2008 to 2015) installed in various locations across the city. The most recent on display in the courtyard of the Anaya Palace, is made from a new type of resin, and draws from themes explored by the artist in his smaller ceramic works. Situated in the Main Square, Gran Elefantdret (2008), shows an elephant balanced on its trunk, and in the courtyard of the Escuelas Menores, 14 Allumettes (14 matches) (2015) forms a coppice of spent matches cast in bronze in variable sizes, the tallest over 3 m high. As in the case of Barcelo’s still life paintings, the theme of these works is the transient nature of everything.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, a performance conceived in collaboration with with French musicians Pascal Comelade and Iván Telefunken, was staged in the courtyard of the Arzobispo Fonseca Residence Hall. Titled La imagen fantasma (The phantom image) (2016), the performance saw Barceló create a great painting with water, on a surface that becomes black when wet, and that will vanish shortly after.

The exhibition is curated by Enrique Juncosa, an expert on Barceló’s work, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, which includes all the works in the exhibition, as well as texts from the curator and American poet and critic, John Yau