A very short introduction to the methods of Pep Admetlla

A first, snatched look at his studio: books and maquettes; words and processes, guides and searches, models and speculations, literature and projects. All mixed together as if forming a seemingly indivisible unit. A second look gradually becoming a first quick sketch: a compact selection of books, select and interdisciplinary forming a backdrop, and various maquettes scattered amongst rolls of tracing paper invading the foreground. I say maquettes although I could have equally said artefacts, object poems, sculptures or even architectures. Only later do my eyes discover, half-hidden, a third element that pulls everything together: sketchbooks, note books or ships’ logs, in which the seafarer records, in drawing and writing, the vicissitudes of each of his uncertain voyages: atmosphere, courses, winds, rigging, waves, force, roll and pitch, cloudscape, discoveries and associations of a helmsman both diligent and daring in his decision taking.

A visit to Pep Admetlla’s studio is at once stimulating and convincing. You have the impression of being able to make out the disperse and yet concrete and embodied meanderings, folds and circumvolutions of his mind. Also, every now and then, there is a bright sparkle or gleam. It is like watching the televised highlights of a show featuring a good number of creative processes leaving us with many thoughts, reflections, clues, various lines of investigation, a series of notes and annotations which enable us to retrace and visualise his arduous explorations.

A manifold tradition – literary, artistic, philosophical and architectural – ransacked and rejuvenated. Knowhow – that of the artisan – activated. Knowledge – scientific and technological – which when needed also intervenes and takes part. Memory, knowhow and intuition in exponential feedback. The notion of exploration is the concept which most closely defines the kind of search on which he continually sets out, as he puts it, in media res, when given commissions or projects. Like a fool who knows many things, or a non-believer who is, after all is said and done, a true believer, Pep Admetlla dares to challenge everything and consider deeply the biggest and yet most elusive questions and objectives: what are poetry, light and time?

Following each of his investigations an instantaneous and challenging neuronal mobilisation is produced as testified to by his notebooks, where we can witness, if we choose, the assortment of tests, errors, discoveries, digressions, losses, realisations and variations which lead the artist to the final crystallisation of an idea, sketch, maquette, artefact or object poem. Some of his processes stop at this stage and are permanently trapped within themselves, both self-contained and self-sufficient. This short-circuiting lends an air of tension to the studio, making it a realm of suspended potentiality. Others move forward, however, towards a form of artistic, sculptural, architectural or even urbanistic execution, and then we can see how the most extreme subjectivity invades the public space, contaminating it and transforming it. The artwork has reached the peak of its growth and maturity. Now it does not belong to the artist but to all of us: it is part of our mental and physical landscape. We meet it again in the streets, squares, chapels and museums that have been subjected to his interventions and nothing will be as it once was. This most antisystem of artists has finally found his place.