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."

—

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

Sandra Balsells, photojournalist. A new portrait for my project, which has now a new title: Barcelona, retrats de proximitat (Barcelona, portraits of proximity)

When I started to look for information about Sandra, whom I did not know, I found the documentary Retrats de l’ànima (Portraits of the Soul), and what was meant to be a quick search, turned into an intense hour of attentive viewing of this impacting document, which literally left me in a state of shock. The next day I bought her magnificent book Balkan, in memoriam and a week later I was portraying her in her cosy flat at the Eixample neighbourhood. Sandra speaks - and listens - with captivating passion. I tell her that, to me, the photograph she took in 1993 of Amra Efica, the girl wounded by a bombing in Mostar, is one of the most tragically beautiful images I have ever seen. She explains to me how she took it in a basement lit only by a candle. How she had to figure out and shoot just the right photos, because she only had one film left, after three days of being held with other journalists and the Spanish blue helmets as human shields by the people of Mostar. Ten years later, Sandra returned to Mostar in search of the protagonists of her war photographs, and above all in search of Amra, without even knowing if she was alive. This is one of the moving stories in Retrats de lànima, which I highly recommend and which can be seen on sandrabalsells.com website.
We also talked about the times of analogue photography, the pleasure of working in the lab, and some of her references, such as Enrique Meneses, Cristina García Rodero and Rafael Sanz Lobato, which she has on her walls.
What a privilege to have shared this time with such an exceptional person. I would gladly have stayed all day.

> Sandra Balsells has a degree in journalism from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a postgraduate degree in photojournalism from the London College of Printing. In 1991, she covered the outbreak of war in Croatia as a freelance contributor to the British newspaper The Times. Between 1991 and 2000, much of her photographic work has focused on the Balkans. In addition, she has also shot numerous reports in Israel, Palestine, Mexico, Romania, Canada, Cuba, Mozambique, Haiti and Sicily. She is the author of the book Balkan in memoriam, and co-author of the books Montreal Metropole vue par 30 grands reporters and Latidos de un mundo convulso. In the television field, she is co-author of the documentaries Dying for the Truth and Retrats de l’ànima, and in 2006 she won the Ortega y Gasset Award for Best News Reporting for her work on the war and post-war period in the former Yugoslavia. In recent years, she has curated the projects Topografía de la ira, Desaparecidos and Antología, the latter two by the photojournalist Gervasio Sánchez, with whom she co-directs the Albarracín Photography and Journalism Seminar.
Since 1995 he has combined his work as a photojournalist with teaching photography at the Universitat Ramon Llull.
Her career is reflected in the RTVE programme Detrás del instante: Sandra Balsells.

Sandra Balsells web site

One more portrait for "Barcelona valors afegits": Photojournalist Anna Surinyach

Who, what, when, where, why. These 5 questions are the basis of journalism. These are questions that do not admit a yes or no as an answer, but rather an explanation, and they form the title of 5W, the great magazine of which Anna Surinyach is co-founder and graphic editor.
We talk about her photojournalistic work focused on people who have been forced to leave their countries because of violence: any kind of violence. She has done work using the material that these people have recorded on their cell phones, which at the end helps us to have another point of view, a more complete image, different from those showing people piled up in dinghies, to which we are already, unfortunately, too used to.
Anna has just returned from Bucha, in Ukraine, where she has been documenting the witnesses of the survivors, who are the ones who can give a more direct testimony of how they have lived all that is happening.

Anna Surinyach is a photojournalist and graphic editor of Revista 5W. She has also worked with other national and international media. The main area of her work as a photojournalist is migration around the world. She has coordinated projects like Tierra sin ellas, winner of the 2019 Desalambre Prize, and Éxodos, with Doctors without Borders. She has made two short documentaries: Misbah, with Revista 5W, and #Boza with the visual artist Severine Sajous. Her photographs have been exhibited in several cities, among them Buenos Aires, Montevideo, San Francisco, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid.

Anna Surinyach website

Actress Laura Aubert, new portrait for "Barcelona, valors afegits"

We meet at el Maldà, a tiny and charming theater in the neighborhood of El Pi, founded and managed by Els Pirates, a company of which Laura is one of the members. They are now performing Els secundaris, an amusing vaudeville inspired by the popular shows of the Paral·lel, in Barcelona, at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite the fact that the show is only half an hour away, she lends herself to the photo session in all tranquility and she still has time to go to the bar downstairs for a snack. On the way, she explains to me, excitedly, that she has just returned from Paris where she has successfully performed, for a month, Oriol Broggi's play 28 i mig with the catalan company La Perla 29.

Laura Aubert is an actress and singer. Her long theatrical career as an actress includes productions such as La Ternura, by Alfredo Sanzol (2019); La Hostalera, by Pau Carrió (2017), or Amor & Shakespeare, by Josep Maria Mestres (2015). She participates in the management of the programming of El Maldà Theater in Barcelona. She is co-founder of Els Pirates Teatre, one of the first alternative theater companies in Barcelona, and was a member of the first generation of the Kompanyia de Teatre Lliure. She has recently participated in television series such as El Crac, by Joel Joan i Héctor Claramunt (2016-2017), or Com si fos ahir, by Sònia Sanchez (2018). In the field of music, she has participated in multiple productions as a solo singer, violinist and double bass player.

Film director Isabel Coixet, new portrait for the project "Barcelona, valors afegits"

I take the portrait of Isabel Coixet in the neighborhood of Gracia, where she has the headquarters of Miss Wasabi, her production company. She's on a tight schedule and she doesn't like to be photographed, so we end up doing an express session. A life-sized figure of Agnès Varda watches over the scene from a corner of the room.
I am left with the desire to tell her about how I admire her work, the delicate intimacy of her narratives, and above all the rhythm, the always appropriate tempo of her films, with its essential silences distributed with precision, as if it was a musical score.

Isabel Coixet worked as a creative director in advertising. In 1988 she debuted as a screenwriter and director with Demasiado viejo para morir joven. In 1996 she traveled to the United States to shoot her first feature film in English, Things I never told you, for which she won the Fotogramas de Plata award. In 2000 she founded her own production company, Miss Wasabi Films. She has shot 25 films including My life without me, awarded at the Berlin Festival 2003 and Goya for best adapted screenplay, The secret life of words, awarded Goya for best film, best direction and best original screenplay, Elegy, Ayer no termina nunca, Mi otro yo, Learning to drive, Nadie quiere la noche and The bookshop, awarded Goya for best direction. His latest film is Nieva en Benidorm.

She has also worked in the documentary genre, with titles such as Viaje al corazón de la tortura, Invisibles, winner of the Goya for best documentary film, Spain in a Day and Aral, el mar perdido.

In 2009 she received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts and in 2015 she was recognized with the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of France. She received the National Cinematography Award in 2020.