SERGI ROCHER SPEAKING

Personal introspection is a challenge to me when I try to voice what I feel by the means of a paintbrush, giving it expression on canvas or a piece of wood. That’s how I enter the cave of a big sleeping bear; I´m afraid of waking him up and of what might happen, but curiosity surpasses me and I get in from time to time looking for new sensations.

Every time I finish a picture, I step back, I relax, I think of nothing, I look at it and let it speak to me for a while. That’s the time to know what painting says to me, that’s also the time to put away one of those masks we use to hide something behind. That’s when my soul takes a deep breath and I feel I’m growing up as a human being and I’m able to keep on sailing at night through the plains of my sea.

I feel we are living in a world full of fictitious images trying to seem authentic, of personal values bordered on absurd, of narcissistic and antiquated ideas about soul, men’s feminine and creative side. That’s what I see and I need to express it as I feel it. And I do, of course, by painting.

During this short journey of life, I isolate myself to feel both void and fulfillment, to meet the most intimate part of myself. Then, I’m able to get the sweet fruits by hands of imagination that will feed me at difficult times. Those are unexpected and magic moments when I pick up images from all around and paint to make them talk to me alone.

It’s funny the wide range of feelings I pass through while I’m painting a picture: fear, happiness, sadness, discontent, passion, boredom… I bring to light what I’ve seen reflected in the eyes of the people passing by, what I read in their way of speaking (sometimes empty sentences and cliché speeches).

I like thinking that my pictures can make someone’s feelings and thoughts move and revisit some past experience.
Take a walk through the gallery, look at the paintings, enjoy. I will always be interested in what you have felt.

I believe that any artistic expression allows you to tell yourself and everyone else what you feel and think about the world surrounding you.
I invite you to take a look inside and find that acorn containing the full essence of a unique and magnificent oak tree.

SILVIA TARRAGÓ SPEAKING

Psychologist-psychoalanyst
Introduction to the exhibition held at Enrique Eskenazi center. Barcelona, November 2003

This is an unusual introduction, because I’m not only introducing a person, but an ABILITY: the ability to imagine.

Most of us don’t dare to let this old lady, Imagination, get into our lives in a creative way. We forget her in childhood and feverish nights. But then, suddenly, artists appear: those unique beings, like Sergi, and do dare!

They travel to strange places where trees are quiet and thoughtful old men; where the hands of the great puppeteer, that invisible God, move the strings of our destinies; where wolves roar and vomit butterflies; where baby girls cry rain and everything is possible.
Sergi’s paintings are like this: a place where is possible to imagine. He is not afraid: he has dinner with the old lady, listens to her past stories and then paint them…
He doesn’t know who dictates, but his hands need to paint them. And when he finishes, someone has suddenly opened a window and fresh air gets into a room where there used to be too much smoke.

We watch and we breathe.., because hand in hand with Sergi, one goes back to the place where playing was the natural thing to do, and time was only determined by being hungry, thirsty, or needing to pee… and nothing else was so important. There were fairies and monsters in that garden, and goblins and dragons, labyrinths and centres…

We must remember! there was hope in there, and happiness, and sometimes fear.., but there were always too the passion for knowing and the strength to win the battle.

I’ve got some pictures by Sergi and I know the effect they make. I’m not lying: I go back to that garden where everything is possible again and again. That’s why I want to introduce you to Sergi and that’s why I recommend you to take home one of his paintings.

I haven’t been able to stay and live at the garden…, none of us has. I’m too old and I live daily reality, but right now, I take a deep breath and while I’m looking at the Sergi’s painting in front of me, I feel that the garden gate is half-open.