Taj Painting on stage

FROM 18 OCTOBER TO 29 OCTOBER 2011
FROM 10AM TO 4PM

" When my grandfather was born they were already talking about the death of painting. By the time of my birth painting had died several times over : like in films about Dracula where death is shown with big sound effects , drums and smoke… then nothing : painting dies but is still there. We never see its resurrection. This has ended up by giving a strange spectral nature to this noble art : painting, sepulchre without rest, wandering from here and there, without ever finding or settling. Without support or a picture rail like the flaccid skin of a Michelangelo. Always there and always agitated. I want a painting that has chromatophores (Cthulhu), like the skin of a cuttle fish, that is sometimes invisible and sometimes appears in its monstruous whiteness like Moby Dick. In its movements (The discovery of the body of St Marc, Tintoretto), the octopus becomes a white whale which becomes the Taj Mahal. The wall is invisible, the place of the curtain in a theatre auditorium. Finally what is put on stage. The audience is faced with a painting which is turned back to front to the auditorium. My painting has has the same relationship to photography, that the theatre auditorium has with the art gallery : old 19th century things. I performed (or produced) Pasodoble with Nadj here at the Bouffes du Nord and there was already a turnaround and conjuring tricks.. Moving the painting and the painter’s gestures, his equipment… There, it’s the same, whereas painting, the theatrical performance and poetry come from faraway, from a place where death doesn’t happen. Insterad of a play we have the back of the painting in silence. No text. No theoretical base. The Taj Mahal is like an enormous white ball, like a cartoon character. Or like an enormous phosphorescent jellyfish (Arthur Gordon Pym). The blinding lights of a lorry in the night. Ultimately, the audience’s gaze nourishes the painting and almost sets it alight. That kills. Its not serious"

Miquel Barcelò