Inauguration of Tomàs Suñol (31st march 2017)
Tomàs Suñol consolidates his presence at the Rusiñol Gallery. For the third time, since 2010, he delights us with his narrow alleys, and with the sunrays filtering and projecting their inevitable shadows in nooks and corners. They are a theme and style of the painter who is present here with us today.
But, are these alleys like this? Do they exist? Yes, in the oldest neighborhoods of the towns. But the painter adds his own significance. The art critic Josep M. Cadena commented that «the work of Tomàs Suñol is perhaps one of those that expresses more clearly that figuration and abstraction are the same. He is a figurative painter (…), but in all these things he finds representations of persons, representations of feelings, representations of circumstances».
«What he doing is not to represent, but to paint: painting is different from representing. The painter explains a new way of looking at things. When we are standing in front of his work, the painter is telling us: —Think about it, meditate, and above all, you can feel… Painting is in the feelings» (Josep M. Cadena).
The artist’s testimony was clear when he was asked whether the painting had been done outside —in the street— or in the studio. «In the studio! I go down the street and I look around and back in the studio I interpret what I have seen. I do not reproduce anything specifically; I paint things that I have seen and felt».
But on this occasion, Tomàs Suñol surprised us by bringing in a “new” theme. Josep M. Cadena expresses his surprise: «In this collection, Suñol also highlights his feelings in works that I had never seen before: they are a kind of still life, a kind of “floral games“. We ask ourselves, is this the painter that I have come to see? Here there is a totally different thing: there is a joy, a satisfaction, a manifestation of nature. Here there is also an introspection on human life: through the dining table. But on this table the artist has produced dishes, fruits, a half filled glass… We can have an appetizer, I mean, an “appetizer of thoughts”».
