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

Pep Puig, Art worker. new portrait for BCN VA

I met Pep in the 90s when he was a pioneer in interactive production in Barcelona and he often commissioned me to create designs. A photograph of Miles Davis presided over his office. We immediately connected. Now we're neighbours and we spend a lot of time talking about art, music and life at his studio in La Floresta. Pep defines himself as an art worker, because the term "artist" makes him uncomfortable. It is a good definition, because his artistic restlessness has him constantly active: when he has not yet finished a project, he is already planning a couple more. His graphic work is therefore abundant, and in constant evolution. Behind every drawing, painting or printing, there is a demanding formal concern but also a rich discourse, often surprising. This coherence is, for me, the best of his work.

Pep Puig has worked as a designer, draftsman, layout artist, editor, photographer, director and video producer. He has collaborated with newspapers such as Mundo Diario, El Noticiero Universal, El Periódico, El Món and Diario de Barcelona. In 1984 he founded the video production company Clara Films and in 1989 Interacción, a pioneering company in the creation of interactive media. In 2003 he set up an industrial design studio and Bitenberg, a new interactive production company. In 2012 he collaborates in the creation of the art therapy centre Espai 21. He is currently working on his own artistic creations.

Pep Puig website

Mariona Berenguer, an exceptional artist for BCN VA.

On the second day of the year and a few hours before she returned to Berlin, I photographed Mariona Berenguer, an artist with a complex and powerful discourse. It seems that Mariona does not waste time on the superfluous and focuses her world on everything that moves her artistic performance. She has an attractive sweetness and at the same time a strong, determinant attitude.

This is how she defines her artistic approach: My artistic practice is fundamentally grounded in the exploration of conditions in which the possibility of opposites coexist, creating a unique tension between seemingly disparate positions that coalesce or combine into works which investigate a space “between”.

Mariona Berenguer studied at the Escola Massana in Barcelona, specializing in sculpture, and graduated at the University of Barcelona with a degree in Fine Arts.

She takes part in group exhibitions at LafuturA gallery (Barcelona), Fine Arts Academy (Sabadell), History Museum (Sant Feliu de Guíxols), TEDxBarcelonaWomen, San Salvador Monastery (Burgos), Maristany Art Centre and Es-Fiera 72 (Sant Cugat). In 2018, her work is selected for the XXI Biennial of Catalan Contemporary Art, where she presents Metástasi(s), an audiovisual installation with a performative extension in the company of the pianist Lucía Fumero. In 2019 she takes part in the Loop festival in Barcelona with an audiovisual installation in collaboration with the sound artist Juan Segura and a group exhibition in Kunsthaus Bethanien, the historical centre of art in Berlin. This last year she has been selected for the Felicia Fuster Foundation grants with the interactive installation About desire, a project with which she starts in the field of robotics and which she has exhibited in Monopol during this year's BerlinArtweek.

She lives and works between Barcelona and Berlin, where she combines her most personal work with the production of the German artist Michael Sailstorfer (König Gallery).

She is currently preparing a solo exhibition on production in art and at the same time she is developing the theme of desire, some of which will be shown at the GlogauAir art centre (Berlin) during the next year.

Beatbox star Dani Pulmón for BCN VA

Looking for new protagonists for the BCN VA project, I went to a remote spot in Collserola to portray Dani Pulmón.

Dani defines himself as a performing artist, because - he tells me - he is not just a musician, or a recognised and award-winning beatboxer, or an actor. He is all of these mixed together. Or, as a mutual friend says, a juggler, capable of making the audience laugh, or dance with only his voice and his small sound system.

Dani Lleonart, known as Dani Pulmón, is one of the greatest exponents of national beatboxing. Always with beatboxing as his cornerstone, Dani is professionally involved in live music, music production, theatre and teaching.

Dani Pulmón website

Luci Gutiérrez, another great illustrator for BCN VA.

Luci tells me that she always appears out of focus in the photos. I smile, trusting my tripod and my camera settings. But back in the studio I discover that in many photos her face does indeed appear slightly out of focus. Luckily there are a few good ones, but I'm still intrigued by that strange power Luci has.
During the photo session she keeps a sweet and calm look, only interrupted by her hands playing endlessly with her glasses. Her drawings reflect this fragile tranquillity; they are clean, concise and funny, with a touch of an almost unsettling naivety.

Luci Gutiérrez studied illustration at the Escola Massana in Barcelona and has worked in advertising, press and books. In 2007 she lived for a while in New York in the hope of learning English well. She did not do so, but she was comforted by drawing people, places and moments of that great city, which later gave life to the book English Is Not Easy, a manual to learn English with joy. She regularly publishes in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and she is a leading illustrator of The New Yorker. She has illustrated campaigns for companies such as Apple or the Barcelona City Council. In 2019, she published her second book, Manual de autodefensa, to make it clear that life, like English, is not an easy matter.
She has received several awards, such as the Communication Arts Award, the Society of Illustrators of New York and the Gràffica prize. But her greatest prize is to sleep many hours a day.

Luci Gutiérrez website

new portrait: Arnal Ballester, a great illustrator for BCN VA.

Arnal transmits sympathy and humour. Just like his drawings, which are wise, ironic and beautiful.

He welcomes me at his house in the Gracia district and we do the photo sessions in his studio, crowded with books and drawings, a universe of references. Looking at his work, one can guess the years of experience in the profession, the care that he puts into each drawing, his demand for the quality of the editions and prints and a rich personal discourse.

Arnal Ballester was born in Barcelona in 1955.  Since 1989 he has been teaching Visual Narrative at the Escola Massana d’Art i Disseny in Barcelona. His field of work is quite diverse and includes books, editorial, advertisement, design and animation. He is the author of 80 illustrated books; doing regular contributions for Spanish and foreign newspapers and cultural magazines; animations for TV, foundations and film festivals.
He has been awarded several prizes, such as the Nacional Illustration Award, Spanish Government Ministry of Culture (2008), Gráffica Awards (2015), or the Premi Junceda d’Honor (2020), among others.

Arnal Ballester website.

Pla-Narbona, a reference point for graphic design in Spain, dies at the age of 92

I had the privilege of meeting Pla-Narbona, a rare artist: graphic designer, painter, draftsman, sculptor, a man with an admirable vitality and creative spirit. I made a portrait of him in 2006, and a few years later I was lucky enough to work with him to design the image for the centenary of La Floresta and also to design his book, which we published in multistudioBOOKS.

We will miss him.

Pla-Narbona and myself working on his book Axiomagrafies (2019).

Art historian Anna Pou van den Bossche, for BCN VA.

I photograph Anna in her work space, at her flat of the Eixample district, in Barcelona. Anna is extremely friendly and outgoing. As a media communicator she feels comfortable in front of the camera. At the same time she projects tranquillity and a special balance that can also be breathed in her luminous studio, with a minimalist, almost Zen-like, decoration and a meditation corner presided by a small Buddha.

Anna Pou van den Bossche has a degree in Art History, a Master's degree in Contemporary Art and a postgraduate degree in Management and Direction of Cultural Platforms. She founded Ágora Servicios Culturales in 2000 and taught at the Instituto Cervantes in Munich until 2014 while collaborating with the Bayerischestaatsammlung and providing teacher training at the universities of Augsburg and Nuremberg-Erlangen as well as at the Colegio de Doctores y Licenciados en Filosofía y Letras de Cataluña, the Universitat de Girona and the Rosa Sensat School. She has carried out educational projects for the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Arranz-Bravo Foundation, the Vila Casas Foundation, Pueblo Español and Roca Barcelona Gallery, among others. She has written books and articles about art education and the figure of Goya in particular. She currently creates content and presents television shows on art (TV3 and BTV), teaches at the Barcelona School of Art History and is a curator at IDEAL Centre for Digital Arts in Barcelona.