Catalan Roig, from the earth to the sky

The Capella de la Misericòrdia in Palma will host, from September 11, 2026 until March 6, 2027, the exhibition Català Roig. From Earth to Heaven , dedicated to the ceramist Joan Pere Català Roig. The exhibition is part of the BIENNIAL B program and is curated by Luis Juan de Sentmenat García-Ruiz. The project proposes an approach to ceramics from an intimate and contemplative perspective, far from the strictly functional conception of the object and focused on its capacity to become an artistic and spiritual experience.

The gesture of modeling, contact with the earth, waiting and the intervention of fire are part of a creative ritual that claims the value of slow time in an era marked by immediacy. Its practice recovers a spirituality of the craft that, especially in the West, seems to have gradually disappeared and that here manifests itself as a form of knowledge, freedom and silence.

The pieces that are part of the exhibition deliberately avoid fashions and trends. Català Roig works from a freedom that allows him to delve into an existential simplification, without resorting to spectacularity or ostentation. His forms transmit an essential, almost mineral sobriety, which turns each object into a silent presence. These are pieces that do not seek to impose themselves on the viewer, but rather to establish a more leisurely relationship with them, based on the gaze and, above all, on the imagination of touch.

The earth retains on its surfaces the traces of the process that has transformed it. The glazes, textures and irregularities reveal a constant tension between what the artist foresees and what the fire ends up deciding. It is precisely in this relationship with fire that one of the most complex dimensions of the ceramic craft appears. The colours can intensify, lose light, darken or change; the curves expand and the cavities can take on a different shape than intended. The ceramist's mastery also consists in knowing how to anticipate these changes, in knowing the material to the point of intuiting what the final appearance of the work will be.

This trust in natural processes connects Català Roig's work with the tradition of the great oriental masters, of which the artist is an admirer. However, his ceramics are not conceived as a nostalgic recovery of these references. On the contrary, his work preserves a marked independence and develops its own language, recognizable in the way of understanding form, surface and the relationship between object and space.

A career rooted in Mallorca

Born in Palma in 1973, Joan Pere Català Roig came into contact with clay in the family workshop Es Retall, a first learning space that would end up marking his relationship with the craft. From 1994 he trained at the Palma School of Art and, throughout his career, he has combined artistic creation with teaching. Between 2012 and 2020 he directed the Municipal School of Ceramics of Marratxí, also consolidating a pedagogical facet linked to the transmission of knowledge of ceramics.

This double dimension, between artistic practice and transmission of the craft, is especially significant in an era in which many traditional forms of manual knowledge have lost their presence. In Català Roig, ceramics still maintains the character of knowledge that passes through the hands and that requires time, repetition, patience and observation.

It is this conception that gives meaning to the title 'From Earth to Heaven'. The proposed journey in the Chapel of Mercy starts from the most elementary materiality —the earth— to lead it towards a poetic and spiritual dimension. The object born from the wheel ceases to be simply a container or a ceramic form to become a presence charged with memory, silence and contemplation.

His pieces seem to speak from their very surface. They are objects that invite one to imagine the gesture of the hands that created them and the touch that might run through them. Their mineral purity and formal restraint place them in a territory close to poetry: suggestive forms, precious precisely because they do not need to proclaim their beauty.

In this sense, Català Roig occupies a unique place within contemporary ceramics. His work claims a way of understanding the craft in which technique is not an end, but a way to reach a deeper experience of the material. The ritual of creating, waiting and letting the fire act becomes a philosophy of life that recovers the value of patience and recollection.

The pieces exhibited in Palma can thus be understood as small constellations within a larger universe. Each form contains the time of its process and, at the same time, opens a space for contemplation. In an era particularly inclined to visual excess and speed, the work of Joan Pere Català Roig claims precisely the opposite: silence, measure and the possibility of looking without haste.