From a notebook full of projects…

And it turns out the far reaches of speculation provide, at times, arguments for practice…

Paul Valéry. Eupalinos, or the Architect

The first time I came into contact with Admetlla’s work it was as a latent kernel in a black, hard-cover notebook. He had come to see me on the recommendation of his friend, the great artist Torres Monsó, but instead of deploying piles of information, images, catalogues and dossiers etc. he just carried under his arm this fragile but strategic volume to explain his projects. And it was from here, from paper, from its pages filled with drawings and writings, that we extracted his exhibition Egypt as a catalyser for a whole way of life continually in process.

Its base was a space free of forms which started from geometric relations. From this constructive core the square became a city with three essential points: the worldly, the metaphysical and that of recycling, symbolised by man. It was a complete system articulated through notes, maquettes, objects etc. And the notebook full of projects was the element which allowed us to run through all possible formal structures (a square, a table, a chair, a jar etc.), since he saw all things as consciously relating to one another. It is not about placing just another volume in the space but making one come into being according to a narrative where the metaphor for existence is implicit, the dream of transforming the world by configuring a city from utopian cities, because apart from the potential of being realised, the project and the maquette are artworks in themselves.

When Torres Monsó met him in a shabby, shared studio with few facilities, he was pleasantly surprised. They quickly became friends, probably due to “a question of pure chemistry”, as well as having things in common, names, preferences… When describing his friend’s creative approach Monsó wrote: “There are people who work very quickly, who are very ingenious, and there are others who produce things slowly, who digress, who go out on a limb and can extend, transform, or think about a work for ever. I don’t know if you could say they are utopian, but they don’t really have their feet on the ground and don’t have much to do with practicalities. (…) Pep Admetlla belongs to the second group. I don’t know if it is good or bad, but that’s the way it is. (…) I haven’t the faintest idea how Pep’s future will work out, I’m no fortune teller, nor am I anyone to give advice, I don’t believe advice, nor am I asked to give any. But I do think that, from what I’ve seen until now, he’s full of the right kind of energy, and I don’t say that simply because we’re friends. Time will tell.”1

Time puts everything in its place. This exhibition, without being an exhaustive anthology, does give pointers to a career which, like a polyhedron, shows many sides. And his project, like a source of a life process (sculpture, drawing, design, painting, architecture, anatomy, science, Rilke, Vesalio, Piranesi, Valéry, Calvino, Pärt…), never ends. It does not grow lineally, but like a thought open to various dimensions. It articulates, in short, the world of art as a core of relationships and associations where limits between disciplines do not exist.

First there was Egypt, with a design of projected architecture, of constructed and organised space, of the polyvalency and versatility of forms; and now there is Venice. It is as though the circle is completed with Calvino’s invisible cities just at the point where orders and hierarchies disappear and static frontiers between disciplines are erased. Ultimately, the way in which we question our behaviour and words, our way of approaching the world, will always out.

Glòria Bosch