Yesterday, October 2nd, Galerie Untitled (Andorra) opened its doors to the inauguration of the new exhibition by Spanish artist Paula Valdeón Lemus. We spoke with Paula about her creative universe and the vision that inspires her work.
“When I walk through a city, I notice those details we often overlook: a flower carved into a façade, a broken tile on the pavement, a fragment of ornament that survives amid the urban noise.
In my work, I’m interested in exploring how the decorative and the natural intertwine in our everyday lives. Drawing from memories of different cities and countries, I collect fragments found during my daily walks and transform them into works that speak of the paradox of inhabiting spaces where nature is increasingly absent.
The flower, so often repeated in architecture as an ornamental element, becomes here a motif of solace, a way to make up for the absence of natural landscape we feel in our cities.
I work by combining manual and digital techniques, playing with weave and pixel. From tiles I find during my walks, I reconstruct their designs – symbols of past splendours – and reconfigure them into more abstract and contemporary compositions. In this way, historical motifs are transformed into something new: soft, almost schematic forms that contrast with the rich ornamentation of the original ceramics.
My pieces invite both seeing and touching: they have textures reminiscent of low reliefs and architectural moldings. I’m interested in this interplay between the visual and the tactile, because it speaks to the fragility of what is built and to the beauty that hides in small things.
What I seek through my work is to draw attention to what we usually overlook and to propose a pause and look with new eyes at those places and details that surround us in everyday life, yet so often go unnoticed.”
