Anna Adell


Joan Saló, pulse and thought 

Throughout the decades, abstract painting has been sheltering in utopian speeches or skeptical mood. If Kandinsky opened a spiritual vision of abstract poetry and plastic, Mondrian geometry summarized the cosmic order, artists linked to minimalism trivialized such principles advocating a tautological claim of reducing it to support the paint and pigment. Both trends, the romantic and formal, were losing their orthodoxy and enriching each other.

Between these two poles, between the search for a transcendental experience and formal exaltation, between the momentum in emotional expression and hiding personal imprint on the painting process, the nuances are infinite. The wake of this traditional dilemma permeates the work of Joan Saló, whose sensory conceptual ambiguity and ambivalence makes it unique.

Repetitive strokes subtle linear patterns or reticular build frames that recall the prints textile yarn, but also scrambled channels of video, a digital tapestries and even electroencephalographic meters. Looking at these paintings they converge dual impressions of precision and lyricism, textured warmth and cold calculation, the result of artisanal procedure that achieves a highly accurate result.

The pulse of the artist materializes on the canvas as calligraphic transcription purely mental, free even of linguistic codes. The work happens by harmonic assembly hand and thought.

Saló defies the classic oppositions between drawing and color, between gesture and color field, while facilitates the meeting between Eastern and Western mystical traditions. Is the viewer who will either interpretive trail from her contemplative experience.