Marta Boan works from the smallest of workshops at the Poble Espanyol, a tourist attraction in Barcelona where one can find artist workshops. She defines hers as simple and austere, luminous and comfortable, but minimal throughout, in synchonicity with the work she creates which is based on the simple reduction, both in size as well as in the treatment of shapes.
The first thing that caught my eye was a white wall where jewels from the “min.” series are displayed. The bench and a table occupy the largest part of the space, all else is reduced.
When we talk about her working progress, Marta shows me some of the notebooks she fills with drawings and notes. She tells me that she follows a methodology of trial and error that advances in a jumble of possibilities. “I employ a few formal bases that help me to have sufficient control within the uncertainty,” she says. Her creative exercise consists of the casting aside of superfluous things: “the thought in general is complex and I’m interested in purifying it to extract everything that is unnecessary, which becomes part of the statement, to remain with its essence.”
She solidifies her artistic references by way of a vocabulary that tries to reach a singular vision of a global world in Art, Literature and Design and she mentions the artist Wassily Kandinsky as someone she admires for his abstract knowledge, writer Javier Marías for the depth of his writings, and designer Martí Guixé for confronting different fields of creation.
Jewels by Marta Boan are mostly made with gold and titanium, though she also uses platinum, copper and different alloys of gold, as well as threads and plastic. In this space she has the basic work tools and she shares the Puk electrical welding machine at Estela Guitart’s workshop.
While she shows me pendants from the “Useful” series, made in different colors of titanium, she hangs them on the wall and tells me that she is currently working a new collection called “Luxury” based on the aesthetics of “min.” which will be revealed at Amaranto-Joies in April.
She comments that when the jewels are finished and leave her hands, they acquire a life of their own which can be observed from differents points of view, “I realize that with a process of permenance, creation itself makes its own results during the search. There is a dialogue between that we seek and what we discover when we observe what has been formalized. It is one part intent and one part surprise”.
Interview published in Montserrat Lacomba’s blog “Mar de Color Rosa.com Contemporary Jewelr”
http://www.mardecolorrosa.com/2012/02/27/marta-boan-seeking-the-essence/
and on Klimt02 Community
http://www.klimt02.net/blogs/blog.php?Id=13
Thank you!