Pilar Montserrat. Critics and Articles selected.

 

Pilar Montserrat was born in Jaca, departure of Huesca, in 1970. Now she lives and works in Barcelona. She studied Fine Arts in the Faculty “Sant Jordi” in the University of Barcelona (UB). Specialized in sculpture, completed her studies with AutoCAD, Seminaries and Courses. She was centered definitively in sculpture, installation and works now in big formats and in public spaces.

 

Her woks are made normally for a concrete space, no matter if it is interior or exterior. She's interest in the conversation between the artwork and the place where it is. She did a great number of projects of public sculpture , tree of them are fulfill:

 

“Simient” (“Seed”), in the village of Ipies.

 

(…) At the time, one sculpture was inaugurated placed in the “Huerto del Cura”. This is one static sculpture that inspires movement, change, fertility and hope of grow up.

 

Mercedes Portella . “Art and music hand by hand in Ipies” Diary of Altoaragon 2001

 

“Madre Viento” (“Mother Wind”), in garden 19 of IES Piramide in Huesca.

 

“Pilar Montserrat approach us with her art work “Madre Viento” (“Mother Wind”) to one of the more poetical landmarks in the show. She go across the space with cables and organic forms of glass fiber and polyester, that make me feel in the personal level, one signification of “origin”, of “primitive” and "ancestral", of each private own being. The references to the motherhouse with globular structures –mammary glands, empty containers- that float in the air and became mobile with climatologic changes.

The dichotomies between transparency and opacity, between static and dynamic, between volume and emptiness, produce lyric sensations rich and intense. They are trajectories that we do to the nucleus or the revival pure and vital regression to the own identity. Lines that crosses like causes, like ideas, only for suggestion.”

 

Pedro Pablo Azpeitia . About the artistic interventions in IES Piramide: general aspects and particular concepts. Installations 2001.

“Tree points can determined one space.

The material takes form over one blow.

Hanged to one thread, like one skein (hank),

the balls or breasts or breaths.

Seeds, teats or palpitations.

The things near the limit of birthing have one unique power.

Over the time of the garden, the wind plays with his chrysalides .

Tree points can

…

talk to the wind.

 

Ana Belen Pomar Obis . “Madre Viento” 2001

 

She had participated in a lot of Symposium International of Snow Sculpture , in the French Pyrenees -in 1994 and 1995- and in the French Alps -in 1996 and 1997-, there the work is made by tree members equips, and in a big dimensions near 300x300x400cm. For this kind of sculpture it's necessary to do one project proposal to be selected by a jury. She participates in these projects with Pedro Tramullas, Juan Casbas, Monica Guifreu, Nuria Tomas, Eduard Garcia, Tania Costa and Albert Casanye, in four consecutive years.

 

The projects that she does are very divers, like to do one art magazine of original works. In this kind of magazine the number of editions is limit to the number of participant artists. This is a kind of artistic exchange between the artists and couldn't be sold, only expose. Every one who participates exchanges his/her own work with the other creators: picture, sculpture, photography, jewel, design, poetry, music compositors… etc. The conception and elaboration of one common project includes the dialog between the participants, very enrichment.

 

Miguel Mainar, Javier Brun, Fausti Llucia, Juan Casbas, Maria Jesus Bruna, Elvira Fustero, Daniel Morata, Pepe Baeza, Pilar Anglarill, Ana Arnaz, Dominique Bellard, Maria de la P., Lluis Duran, Fernando Fernandez, Marisol Franco, Israel-David Martinez y Aurea Galan are the artist who had participated in the past magazine “Dadelos”, in 2003. “Dadelos” and the conjunct of 432 works done -18 artist and 24 works by artist- had been exposited in two different towns, in “El Centro Cultural el Matadero” at 2003 in Huesca, and in “El Palacio de los Morlanes” at 2004 in Zaragoza. All both in Spain.

 

“We are in the year 2003d.c. The merchandises occupy all Iberia Peninsula… All? No! Ipies, one little village populated for irreducible artists, resists now and forever to the invaders. And the life is not easy for the trimmings of commissaries and merchandises in the reduced camps of Guggenheirum, Sothebyrium, Macbanum and Pradorum…

 

“Dadelos” Javier Brun

http://www. ipies.org

 

The extend number of participation in collective expositions enrich the artist and forge her in the esthetic discourse.

 

(…) “De Costas” -To Backs- is one collective exhibition of plastic arts made by eight women resident in Barcelona, Catalonia; take place at the Gallery Augusto Cabrita, at the Forum Cultural of Seixal, Portugal. (…)

 

Estrange animal. 1999

Here there are eight form of express and transmit, one feminine discourse plenty of signification and contend esthetic, marked of the influence of the Mediterranean Sea and the sea proximity, two horizons without limits.

 

Seixal Municipal Government . Forum Cultural of Seixal. Portugal, 1999

 

She did too ephemeral interventions:

 

(…) the idea of Pilar Montserrat was that the word does all the way. For this, the artist put one transparent plastic ribbon in the small wall, going out of the place of Ipies, just to the church. In this transparent plastic ribbon people who pass could write whatever they want: one word, one sentence, one desire, one thinking… (…)

 

Mercedes Portella . “The ways, art in the street” Diary of Altoaragon 2003

 

The repercussion of her works in the society that involves her becomes real with the sculpture “Prize Venero 2003”, recommended by the association “Rio Aragon”. The “Prize Venero 2003”was granted to Pedro Arrojo, who has the Prize Goldman too, -considered the Prize Nobel of the Middle Ambient- for his works in defenses of a new “Water Culture”.

 

“Prize Venero 2003” granted to Pedro Arrojo Pilar Montserrat

 

Pilar Montserrat, sculptor and author of Prize Venero 2003.

The Jaquesa Pilar Montserrat is the author of the Prize Venero 2003 that the association “Rio Aragon” -against the re-growth of Yesa- gived this Saturday to Pedro Arrojo, Prize Goldman. Her work is one river stone from the Aragon River; express the life of the river and the mountain but the covetousness for the water richness. (…)

 

Luisa Pueyo . “My work express the live of the river and the covetousness for the water” Diary of Altoaragon 2003.

 

http://www.yesano.com/20030506_Pilar_Montserrat.htm

http://www.yesano.com/11-M_Previo_EP.htm

 

 

She participates in many concourses and prizes that comported exhibitions, like the collective exhibition in the “Sala Muralla” of IVAM -Valencia Institute of Modern Art - itinerant in all Spain, resulted of being selected in the concurs “Prize Bancaja” with her work “Corpus Fugit”- Fugitive Body- in 2005 . She has been selected too for the Foundation Jose Garcia Jimenez in Murcia, Spain with her work “Abreme” -Open-me- in 2006 .

 

 

Prize Bancaja Fugitive Body. 2005

Foundation J. Garcia Jimenez. Open me. 2006.

 

 

 

 

The work made by Pilar Montserrat have they roots in one interior world, sensitive and alive and this is transmitted by different materials , in constant change. The earlier works are made of stone, iron, wood and platter, evolutes faster to other not so normal like skin, toils, cotton, glass, salt or sugar. The material is chosen for it's only proprieties, and for all the emotive load that it means. In the ephemeral interventions she works normally with materials funded at the same location: wood, stone, different colored land, fallen leaves… Snow is another kind of material that she knows very well. The easiness of material permits fast and big works.

Emotional Shield . 2004

 

She is a creator in constant activity, like you can see in her late individual exhibition “Límit Elàstic” -“elastic limit”- made in Barcelona in the Gallery of Athenaeum Fort Pienc, in November 2005. The works exhibited in these gallery, search the direct intervention between work and public, without anybody more like interceptor: “Look at me”, “Touch me”, “Love me” “Get into me”… pretends that contemplation is not enough to clasp the art work, and less if it is one sculpture. The audience is asked for touch the works, and ever if they do or not, something of the work goes with them, and the work is impregnate with something from the public, like in the work “Move me”, made with adhesive ribbon, put it with the adhesive face outside it. The work admits a lot of things that persist in its surface, all that comes near to it was adhere to it, becoming the preferred of the little ones and testimony of what happened there.

 

TOUC ME 2005

“Proximity is the vital condition where we are place by “Limit Elastic”. The way that Pilar trust in us its contents it's so immediately, that opens vertiginous the screen of our minds, stir up the powers of imagination. With an emotive and intimate tone Pilar Montserrat discover to us one world of intense allusions in “Limit Elastic”. The materials are chosen for its proprieties and for all the emotive load that they mean; for that, the dialog that se does between the platter, the iron, the plastic and the tissues half open the limits of sensibility. Sensibility and sculpture go together, being conducts in the two ways of sensations that revive in “Limit Elastic”.

Pilar certainty conjugates the poetry of immediate in her sculptures, doing with “Limit” at the same time whisper, mutter, embrace, caress and rend. Every one work of “Limit Elastic” is one inflamed fire of one instant of artistic and personal harmony: we join to the sculptures and we join to ourselves in the irreversible time of the exhibition.

Miki Torrents. Press.

 

 

Pilar Montserrat. January 2007 in Vis-à-vis art lab. China