Lluís Vilà (1952-2010) throughout his career as an artist researched and experimented with a great variety of forms and materials. It is impressing to see his creative capabilities. It was a continuous search that culminated in this series that we now present, made in 2009, a year before his premature death, and which, under the title of “Absolute”, shows us his most aesthetically refined work, a set of paintings and sculptures that stand out for the austerity of their expressiveness.

Irony and spirituality are the two poles between which Lluís Vilà’s last work moves. The abstract and essential forms of his paintings carry a high symbolic load. The blank spaces and the mysterious shapes of his sculptures impose a respectful silence on the spectator. This absence of color is a process of deconstruction of the work itself that, by removing and refining, gives preeminence to white, which contains all possible colors. In this way, the absence of color would be the reverse of the technique of abstract expressionists. Removing color veils until reaching total purity.

For its part, the series of sculptures “Nautes” are anthropomorphic figures that incorporate bread, a recurring element throughout its trajectory. For Lluís Vilà, bread has religious and ritual connotations that connect us with the past. Bread as a symbol of a civilization that has been able to elaborate some raw materials resulting in a food around which we gather. A social act that link us with other cultures. These sculptures, mysterious and ambiguous, represent a break from the classic beauty canon to go further in its meaning. They are like lost figures in our world, whose goal is to question the reality in which we live.

Lluís Vilà’s work in this solo show forms a unit. His paintings connect with these deformed bodies that transit towards the search for the absolute and that somehow try to give an answer to our vital inquiries.

Joan Solà Coll