Exhibitions
When matter begins to think: the poetics of the threshold by Joana Cera i Bernad
The Vayreda Fundació d'Olot concludes the cycle Verònica. Visionary Women with an exhibition that explores the tensions between idea and matter, light and darkness, control and chance, in a sculptural practice that understands creation as a form of knowledge.
There is a precise moment in which the stone, the crystal or the thread of salt ceases to be pure inert mass to become a beat, doubt and revelation. Before the word, before even the idea that seeks to dominate it, the matter already possesses a deep memory, an energy in reserve that waits to be heard. The art of Joana Cera i Bernad does not impose itself on the materials to bend them to the will of the author; on the contrary, it approaches them with an almost ritualistic attention, establishing a dialogue where the creative gesture is, above all, an act of deep listening.
With this premise, the Vayreda Fundació d'Olot welcomes the fourth and final proposal of the cycle Verònica. Visionary Women (from October 17 to December 20) curated by Natàlia Chocarro. The exhibition delves into a trajectory where sculpture acts as a backbone, but which expands without complexes towards photography, drawing, video, installation, sound or the subtlety of holography. This transit between languages does not respond to a simple search for formal originality, but to the intimate demand to find the exact channel for each intuition.
Stone, rock crystal, clay, porcelain, wax, salt, plaster, paper or glass function as active agents of an investigation that intertwines the physical properties of matter with its symbolic and cultural weight. In Cera's hands, matter is a tangible presence, but also a suggestion; it resists, but opens up to metamorphosis.
In the artist's universe, the traditional oppositions between light and darkness, emptiness and fullness, order and chance, or fragility and resistance are not resolved or neutralized, but rather remain in a fertile tension. The work inhabits precisely this threshold—the intermediate space where form is not offered as a certainty or a closed answer, but as an open question. In its process, constant negotiations take place between the artist's will and the limits of the material itself. Chance and the unforeseen are not understood as errors, but as the material itself imposing its conditions, turning intuition into a rigorous method for capturing what emerges spontaneously.
Within the framework of the Verònica cycle, Joana Cera i Bernad's 'visionary' status distances herself from any mystical reading or fantastic effervescence. In her work, seeing means learning to look from another angle, questioning the surface of things and opening channels of knowledge that escape purely discursive reason. It is the search for a clarity —what the artist calls 'vision'— that is born from direct contact with reality.
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