Sitges ReciclArt 2021 is the 6th Festival of responsible art and recycling, held from November 26 to December 19 with a collective exhibition in Can Falç de Mar as its central and unique activity. The objective is to promote awareness in the public about the importance of recycling and responsible consumption in order to reduce pollution.
The exhibition brings together 18 artists and shows a selection of sculptures, paintings and collage made by different creators from Sitges, the rest of Catalonia and other countries such as the United States, Canada, Colombia, Argentina, Switzerland and France. The works on display have been created with recycled waste materials and invite us to reflect on climate change and the pollution of the seas and oceans.
The authors participating in this year's Sitges ReciclArt 2021 exhibition are: Miquel Aparici, Jana Álvarez, Rafael Arroyo, Orson Buch, Sol Courreges, Noni Font, Vicky Gómez Talaya, Richard Keith Hoffman, Marie Lalo, Gisella López, Bill Miller, Jordi Palli, Jordi Prat Pons, Anton Rafecas, Jordi Torrent, Oriol Vidal, Lukas Ulmi and the “Ingravidesa Alliance” collective.
ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS
Jana Álvarez
Torrelavega (Cantabria), 1966. Jana Álvarez is a multidisciplinary artist capable of handling any challenge, she is at home in the worlds of painting, fashion, illustration, assemblage, collage and artistic recycling, easily crossing the boundaries between disciplines. She graduated in Fine Arts and Fashion Design, is based in Barcelona and participates in Drap-Art from its beginning, in 1995.
She claims "manual power" in the face of technology. A constant issue in her work is the reflection on the ephemeral and the absurdity of our society, also the human being, as a devastating, indifferent and ethically dual element. For this purpose, she uses the female figure as a metaphorical archetype of the "universal individual" and as an atavistic representation of the creative and destructive force, composing her mestizo mythologies. All of it wrapped up and disguised in an apparently superficial and sometimes ironic, colorful pop aesthetic, in order to contrast "form and essence," trying to awaken awareness.
The End 2013
39 x 64 cm
Painting and collage of objects on newspaper, scanner screen and printer cover
Waiting to Return 2015
20 x 26 cm
Mixed media with discarded cosmetics and acrylic paint on popsicle sticks and flip flops, collage with sand, shavings, broken paintbrushes and plastic debris, motherboards and remote control elements.
Miquel Aparici
Barcelona, 1963. Miquel Aparici studied at the Massana School and works from his industrial studio in L’Hospitalet.
His sculptures are surprising assemblages, composed of discarded iron and wood objects which have their own history, they are then recycled, and given new meaning as art forms. His work is characterized by simplicity. Using few elements with clean lines, he endows his pieces with brute expressive force.
Rafael Arroyo Villemur
Gijón (Asturias), 1957. Rafael Arroyo Villemur is an Asturian artist who lives and trained as an enameller in Barcelona. He is a Master Craftsman by the Generalitat of Catalonia and has a long history in the field of artistic recycling. During these months of confinement, he has used materials collected and accumulated in his workshop to build a series of unique pieces. They are assemblages that seem to question us, between confusion and a critical spirit, about the harmful effects that our consumption habits cause on the planet.
Orson Buch
orsonbuch.com
(Paris, 1965) Born in 1967 in Paris, the son of German artists, Orson grew up on the island of Formentera between 1970 and 1982. He later returned to Paris to finish his studies and lives there today. His first solo exhibition was held in New York in 1988. He has also exhibited in France, Germany and Spain. In addition to his paintings, for many years he has made tin sculptures, representing animals with minimal intervention of materials, respecting part of the original object.
Sol Courreges Boné de la Torre
Buenos Aires, 1975. She graduated in Graphic Design and Fine Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. She worked in advertising agencies and design studios in Argentina and the United States, where she also obtained a master's degree in Art, and in 1999 she founded his own studio, Ideaslocus, in Sitges, where she lived until she moved to Formentera in 2011. In in 2009 she founded Artecrearte, with the idea of recycling disused elements to create accessories, fashion complements and decorative objects and to leave a mark. Shee has participated in shows of recycled art such as Recicla Madrid (Caixaforum), Mercantic (Sitges), Lab Art (Astúries), Centre Grabrielet (Formentera) and Drap-Art (CCCB, Barcelona). She currently lives in Formentera.
Noni Font
Barcelona, 1962. Noni Font graduated as an industrial designer from the Milan Polytechnic, where he developed his profession for a few years, until he returned to Barcelona, where he created his own company. After 25 years of professional career, he felt the need to seek a new direction in sculpture, involving his love of the sea and the practice of diving, and orienting the theme of his work towards the artistic recreation of fish with recycled materials, managing to give a particular expression with a caricature touch to his works, that at the same time reflect his concern for the environment and contribute to environmental awareness.
Vicky Gómez Talaya
Barcelona, 1971. Vicky is a resident artist at the Argentona Museu del Cantir since 2000 and member of the research and waste recycling group. She started to participate in craft fairs in 2005 and by 2018 she incorporated a new line of work under the name of TRANSFORM-ARTE, based on the reuse of waste materials, creating unique and functional small works of art made out of recycled materials. She participates in sustainable projects, such as Fira de la Terra and Drap-Art Market. She has participated in recycling exhibitions with ceramic waste materials such as the Association of Ceramists, Museu del Cantir, Artesania Catalunya. Her work Nobody is Illegal was exhibited at Nau Art and Drap-Art’20 Festival.
Since 2018 her training and line of work have been focused on social reporting and the environment. Continuing with this philosophy, she has created a poem about the struggle of nature, which she wanted to transform into ceramic.
Richard Keith Hoffman aka RichHARD
London, 1979. RichHARD is an urban post Pop artist who works primarily with iconic pop culture that blends fine arts with a fresh, urban twist. He trained as a fine arts artist at Central Saint Martins. RichHARD's works are bold and primarily revolve around emotions and people. Often provocative, he is not afraid to challenge his viewers. The works can be fun in their aesthetics, but they contain deep attention to detail and treat issues subtly. He bets on artistic creation to make the world a better place.
This year he presents a series that explores the beauty of waste and discards. Everything starts with seeing the uselessness of so many incomplete puzzles that are no longer useful for anything. He has given them a new use, both in form and in function.
Ingravidesa Alliance
Catalunya / Paisos Baixos. The Ingravidesa Sculpture Alliance is an international group of sculptors and designers who collaborate to create abstract sculpture with nature literally at its roots!
They work together for months on monumental projects based on collaborations where each artist is invited to assist in the creative process.
Time is split between Asia, where discarded tree roots are sustainably sourced and prepared, and the studios in Catalonia and Holland where the recycled wood pieces are further worked on and sometimes layered with gold leaf and other precious metals.
Marie Lalo
Montréal, 1964. It is during her stays on her travels that Marie Lalo collects all kinds of original and rare papers. Papers with which she has created her own “painting on paper” technique that she improves according to the whim of her inspirations. Her works are made entirely of recycled papers.
She likes the idea of creating, giving new life to found papers. To follow the path, for example, of an old magazine found in a storage room and see it, in her workshop, take human form.
Gisella López Ariza aka Gise'Be
Suan, Atlántico (Colombia), 1989. Gisella is a fine artist from the Colombian Caribbean. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidad Del Atlántico. She presented a Meritorious Thesis in 2016, with an intervention in public space. She has made the illustrations for the catalog of the adaptation of William Shakespeare's Winter Tale for the Shakespeare project in the Caribbean (carried out by Fullbright Colombia in agreement with the Universidad del Atlántico, 2015, 2017). She has experience in Lettering, design, illustration, screen printing, linocut and street art. She was an art assistant at the Taller Nacional De Comparsa Teatral, 2017, 2018 and a workshop on popular graphics from the Caribbean. From 2014 to 2019 she organized the ArtShow Brujeria in Barranquilla and arrives in Planes (Valencia) just when the confinement begins, in March 2020.
Bill Miller
Cleveland, Ohio, 1962. Miller creates vintage linoleum assemblages that use only the surface found to recreate his themes, with no added paint. His images range from bucolic landscapes to surreal, fiercely political pieces, often based on iconic images from the news and pop culture that have fueled the collective memory of our society. His unexpected use of familiar patterns draws on the nostalgic qualities of his medium, which conveys a sense of personal history and rediscovery, in each piece. Miller's commissioned works include two posthumous album covers of Frank Zappa records and the 2012 Woodstock Film Festival lineup. His work has been exhibited in London, Spain, Australia and the US, notably a solo exhibition in the cafeteria of the American Visionary Art Museum. It has been reviewed in many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, as well as being featured in several books on recycled art, such as Found Object Art 2 y ReTrash.
Jordi Palli
Barcelona, 1960. Before creating his own design studio, he studied at the EINA School of Design and the Massana School. As a teacher, he taught at Elisava, University School of Design, for a decade. He is a member of the board of directors of the Association of Professional Designers (ADP). At the same time, fruit of his tireless creativity, he works on a sculpture project that he cooks between static and dynamic objects based on found objects and old iron junk.
With found objects, piled up or lost, emerged from nowhere, he meets again with the lost universe of the game, where it is necessary to know how to transform the objective form into fantasy and know how to glimpse beyond the reality that allows itself to be touched, a dream world where they become live beings full of shapes and curves.
Jordi Prat Pons
Mataró, 1965. Jordi Prat Pons has been making collages for 33 years and, as he himself affirms, he doesn’t know how to work any other way. He started making them without realizing it and by now has held more than 60 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 100 group shows all over Europe and America. He currently works with books that no one wants. Culture to make culture.
Antón Rafecas
Antón is a self-taught artist, aerial photographer and restorer. Born recycler, a versatile creative professional, rooted in Sitges and a lover of the land, the wind and the sea.
He likes good food, traditions and is a friend of his friends.
Jordi Torrent
Barcelona, 1958. Jordi Torrent lives between Barcelona and Formentera. In addition to creative writing - he has published his first novel, entitled El orfano de los Boisanzón in 2019 and in 2020 won the literary prize Ciutat d’Alzira with his novel Els Fantasmes i Madame Levy-, he is also interested in the interrelationships of living beings with each other and their environment, he co-directed the Posidonia Art and Ecology Festival from 2010 to 2013, on the island of Formentera. He is also a founding member of Drap-Art and works as a visual creator with found materials.
Oriol Vidal
Barcelona, 1970. Oriol Vidal obtained a degree in architecture from the ETSAV (Higher Technical School of Architecture of the Vallès) in 1997. He continued to study at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He studied Sculpture at the Llotja Superior School of Design and Art of the Generalitat de Catalunya, academic years 2002-2005. He works in architecture and sculpture and since 2009 he has also participated in group and individual exhibitions in different cities and countries, developing a continuous artistic task always in the world of sculpture, experimenting with found objects and waste materials. He proposes process, not form. Experimenting with matter, extracting from it what is implicit and not visible to us, to dialogue, to negotiate, to find. To observe everything that we come across that can be added to the process, that feeds it, enriches it, disturbs it. Abstract objects that live marked by what is absent and that maintain a strong presence.
Lukas Ulmi
Lucerna (Suissa), 1958. Ulmi’s work unveils the hidden beauty of shapes, stones, seemingly static forms, incomplete or meaningless objects that are often found washed up on Valencia’s beaches. These recycled items are turned into authentic sculptures where weightlessness, movement and poetry unite in delicate iron compositions that subvert ideas of harmony, balance and space. His works have strong connections to the earth, creating circles and lines representing a symbolic return to primary contact, such as planets in constant motion or the harmonic flow of energy in nature.