Juegos reunidos. Chema Madoz-Joan Brossa

Prats Nogueras Blanchard is pleased to present Juegos Reunidos, featuring photographs by Chema Madoz and object-poems by Joan Brossa, bringing together works by both artists for the first time in an exhibition.

When Jordi Coca asks Joan Brossa what a poem is, Brossa replies: “a concentration of language and an essay in correspondences.” The way both Joan Brossa and Chema Madoz observe and represent reality seems consistently driven by a need to generate more and more correspondences—to invent them, or even to force them when necessary. It is as if the relationship between the individual and nature (or reality, in essence, the world around us) were the central focus of their inquiry, and the most fruitful way for them to delve into this relationship were to demonstrate that everything is interconnected. Thus, any element of reality, no matter how insignificant—a shoe, a light bulb, a chess piece—might hold a meaningful correspondence within the cosmos.

The overarching idea in the objects created by Brossa and Madoz is that of a unified world where anything can be transformed into something else. Therefore, the collection of analogies that constitutes their object-based work is essentially an exercise in cataloging reality—not only the obvious but, above all, the reality visible only through poetic eyes. Rocks, pebbles, trees, rain, water droplets, or the moon find their equivalents in objects from the most ordinary aspects of daily life. In short, in things.

(Excerpt from Juegos Reunidos, Juegos de Correspondencias by Maria Canelles Trabal, 2024)