Visual poetry agitating emotions

From left to right, Gonçal Mayos, Toni Prat and Miquel Pérez.
From left to right, Gonçal Mayos, Toni Prat and Miquel Pérez.
Culture
(09/05/2019)

The Faculty of Philosophy of the UB is holding, until June 30, the exhibition Poesia filosòfica…visual by Toni Prat, which includes a hundred works distributed around the building of the Faculty. “Visual poetry is that which can touch the conscious and the unconscious, which agitates emotions and convictions, and which shocks us with its abstract and exquisite eloquence, everything together in a metaphor”, says Prat -about his works.

This artist from Vic -who was dedicated to erotic photography for years, but had done sculpture and mathematic poems- went to Tàpies Foundation to see a Joan Brossa exhibition and fell in love with it. He decided to start on visual poetry and published the book Eloqüències: Poesia Visual -convinced that it was a good way to communicate with the audience. His art awarded him, in 2012, the Poesia Brossiana Award.

From left to right, Gonçal Mayos, Toni Prat and Miquel Pérez.
From left to right, Gonçal Mayos, Toni Prat and Miquel Pérez.
Culture
09/05/2019

The Faculty of Philosophy of the UB is holding, until June 30, the exhibition Poesia filosòfica…visual by Toni Prat, which includes a hundred works distributed around the building of the Faculty. “Visual poetry is that which can touch the conscious and the unconscious, which agitates emotions and convictions, and which shocks us with its abstract and exquisite eloquence, everything together in a metaphor”, says Prat -about his works.

This artist from Vic -who was dedicated to erotic photography for years, but had done sculpture and mathematic poems- went to Tàpies Foundation to see a Joan Brossa exhibition and fell in love with it. He decided to start on visual poetry and published the book Eloqüències: Poesia Visual -convinced that it was a good way to communicate with the audience. His art awarded him, in 2012, the Poesia Brossiana Award.

All poems exhibited in the Faculty of Philosophy can shock the spectator because they contradict logics (for instance, a bird in a cage with another bird in a cage) and interpellate them with existential questions such as the passing of time (a clock ticking hours after 25), or racial discriminations (a chess board with two levels and the white pieces in the upper level and the black ones in the lower one), without forgetting about political satires (a ballot box acting as a shredder).

 

The secrets of Pratʼs creative process, told by the artist

As an activity together with the exhibition, on Wednesday, the students were invited to take place in an open debate with the artist and two lecturers to analyse the features of Pratʼs work: Gonçal Mayos (UB), did so from a philosophical perspective, and Miquel Pérez Mas (University of Vic), from the History of Art perspective.

The activity gave the attendants an opportunity to meet the artist and solve their doubts on the singularities of Pratʼs work, who basically works with photographs and then manipulates them graphically. “I always start with a concept, and then I try to find the best image to represent it, not the other way round”, he said -regarding the creation process he follows. Inspiration can come up at any moment: “my computer is my living room and while I watch the TV I also write ideas down on my paper tablecloth”.

Also, the artist said the secret is in “reducing, simplifying and reaching the essence. I try to say the largest amount of things using only one image and I try this image to be as concise as possible. I donʼt want it to be too beautiful aesthetically, like when I made erotic photography, because then the spectator gets lost in the beauty of the image and does not go beyond that”. He also noted that the images he provides are not only a graphic representation, like a wedding photograph, but these go beyond meaning because they try to create some uncertainty, to make people think.

Regarding the interpretation of every poem, he said he is quite pretentious, “when I write a poem I expect the others to understand my idea, of course I respect all the possible interpretations, but I would like everyone to get the idea I wanted to transmit”. Last, Prat said his works have no title: “I decided the images had to talk for themselves, I did not want to give any hint to the spectators, and there is no need to be named ʻno titleʼ. The images have to work out by themselves”.