Octubre – Noviembre 2009 Ercole D’ Este Award

“Between Arcadia and Utopia” an Imaginary Journey.
Rosa Rius Gatell. University of Barcelona.

Under the title “Between Arcadia and Utopia”, Rosa Mascarell has gathered panels that seem to guide us toward a determined space: «between». This is not therefore Arcadia, an imaginary place, as the myth says, where happiness reigns, a space uncorrupted by civilization; nor Utopia (the no place) where human life, as read in the Utopian stories of the Renaissance, is perfectly organized. The place that the author wants to show us, which continues (or closes) the cycle that she initiated with “The Creation”, is without doubt Paradise. But is Paradise really found between the two places mentioned before? Where is it? Perhaps it would be better to ask ourselves where are the different paradises.

How does Rosa Mascarell represent them to us? With a work that makes us constantly feel the artist-craftsman’s imprint on the material. Far from remitting to an impossible creation from nothing, Rosa’s paintings often speak us less of their author and more about the hands that, patiently and cleverly have built them.

The physics of the painting is very important. The gold and the silver have introduced a splendid light. The thread of cotton ―only one thread for each painting― has conformed labyrinthine reliefs, like cloisonné in some cases, or of magnificent embroidery in others. Rosa has created a space fundamentally vegetal for its Paradise, where the arabesque has a constant presence. Some pieces contain a myriad of leaves that often are transformed into wings, flowers, feathers, fantastic butterflies. Pieces of Paradise that do not exclude one another.

The imaginary journey of Rosa Mascarell begins with time and space. Her work is one of the possible paradises capable to answer some of the “where” and the “when” questioned before: the answers can be numerous. Perhaps, by being unlimited they can occurred and maybe this is their necessary condition for possibility.