
© Miquel Barceló / Adagp, Paris, 2022. Photo: David Bonet.
Review
Miquel Barceló: Grisaille
October 8, 2022 – January 7, 2023
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin
I don’t like what is being shown; but I like how it is being shown.
Dark paintings, relating to pre-history [oxes]; late antiquity [fishes/bible]; and baroque [banquets].
Purple – blood; gray/grisaille – smoke. Fluffy puffy pink and yellow.
These paintings are nicely dirty, even playful by times. Miquel Barceló elaborates on historical forms of the still life, offering a new interpretation. Indeed, these paintings shift between stasis and movement; fossils and water, image and smoke.
A Birthday table [on my Birthday], extravagance and decay. The one comes with the other, and balance is reached through the extremes. Aka: Art.
Knives, and death, violence; and light. This poignant white, like snow, like powder, like mortar. Skulls and pomegranates, skeletons and lobsters. We love the excess.
Pure paint in its refined form.

© Miquel Barceló / Adagp, Paris, 2022. Photo: Charles Duprat.
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