Albert Merino

Albert Merino holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, where he specialized in video art. He later completed his postgraduate studies as a Meisterschüler under the tutelage of artist and professor Inge Mahn.

He has participated in numerous festivals, solo and group exhibitions, residencies, and has received various video art awards.

Merino creates through a hybrid language, constructing a broad imaginary with which he intervenes and transforms everyday life, often bordering on absurdity and irony.

Using different graphic resources, he questions the architecture of images and the ability to alter them with contemporary manipulation techniques.

Interested in deconstructing visual language, he has experimented with various forms of narration, ranging from non-narrative language to comedy or mockumentary, addressing themes from the condition of the individual in contemporary society to imaginaries of collapse or the political use of images and symbols.

Merino has been coming to Formentera for 20 years, and the work presented here is an ironic staging of small bathers enjoying “beaches” formed by the puddles of city drains and sewers, as if they were Caribbean paradise beaches.

This prompts reflection on the phenomenon of tourism, both in Formentera and other places, where people ignore the environmental degradation caused by their behavior and continue bathing in an increasingly polluted sea, unaware until the water runs out.