Joan Pere Viladecans

JOAN PERE VILADECANS (Barcelona, 1948).
"Drawing of Lao Tse".
Mixed media (painting and collage) on canvas.
Signed.
With label of the Gaspar room on the back.
Measurements: 128 x 49 cm; 141 x 62,5 cm (frame).

This work of Viladecans is articulated as a vertical composition of strong symbolic and meditative character, where painting and collage are integrated in a refined and deeply introspective language. The predominance of violet - a color associated with the spiritual, the nocturnal and the introspective - establishes a mental rather than physical space, a field of contemplation in which the elements appear suspended and ritualized.

The work is structured almost like a totem or archaic figure, with minimal signs that evoke a schematic face: dots, arches, triangles and a natural shell incorporated by collage, which acts as a mouth or symbolic organ. These signs refer to primitive alphabets, philosophical diagrams or ritual marks, in tune with the explicit reference to Lao Tse, a central figure of Taoist thought. The composition thus suggests key concepts of Taoism such as emptiness, duality, balance and the circulation of energy, expressed not in a narrative but in a sensorial way.

Within Viladecans' production, this work is fully situated in his mature line of the seventies and eighties, in which the artist develops his own vocabulary based on the repetition of signs, formal austerity and the integration of poor or organic materials.

Viladecans has exhibited continuously in historical galleries such as Sala Gaspar and in national and international institutions, and his work is part of important public and private collections, including the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), the MACBA, the Fundació Vila Casas, the Reina Sofía Museum and various institutional funds in Europe and America. Viladecans is recognized for a solid and reflexive career, marked by formal austerity, symbolic depth and a constant exploration of the poetic sense of the image.