Archives: Talents

Matilla studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Eloy in Salamanca and holds a degree in Art History from USAL. From 1974 to 1976, she attended the cycles of applied psychology and pedagogy at the Pontifical University of Salamanca.

She came into contact with and learned from renowned artists during her training: Chillida, Jerónimo Prieto, Manuel Manzanaro, Félix Felmart, and Marc Tara Tessier. She has held numerous solo and group exhibitions, both national and international.

In the late seventies, she first settled in Alicante and later in the Balearic Islands, where she met local artists. In 1986, she met the German photographer Reinald Wünsche, who became the father of her daughter, and she settled on the island, combining her personal work with teaching activities. She taught theater and flamenco for adults and gave painting classes for children as an extracurricular activity.

In addition to her teaching work, Teresa has contributed to civic engagement, being one of the founders of the Association of Neighbors of the Island of Formentera (AVIF), an entity with notable participation in various advocacy movements, and an active member of the Council of Entities, the Association of Artists of Formentera (ADAF), and a promoter of the Sant Ferran Artistic Market. This year, she was honored with the title of Adoptive Daughter of Formentera.

Alberto Gramegna is an architect and designer. He has collaborated with various architecture and interior design studios in Rome, Barcelona, Istanbul, and Zurich.

Throughout his professional journey, he focuses on environmental sustainability as an intrinsic component of the discipline itself. In his design project Ottolumi, his approach is reflected in the reuse of existing materials and objects.

Ottolumi is born from the reinterpretation of the traditional lampshade, stripping it of its exterior skin and highlighting the structural support of the lampshade itself. The original metal frame, now revealed, is formally reinterpreted with a network of cords that uncover new geometries already present in potential within the structure.

For the lamp bases, existing objects are used, which are reinterpreted to eventually become unique lamp supports. Thus, a brick worn by the sea, some billiard cues, or some bed legs are adapted to become lamp supports.

Born in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Girona, in 1975, Nei Albertí Gascons is a sculptor whose work seeks to perpetuate and expand forms in space. His sculptures are characterized by linear simplicity and the use of open ellipses that trace paths toward infinity.

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.

Sol Courreges graduated in Graphic Design and Fine Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. She worked in advertising agencies and design studios in Argentina and the United States, where she also obtained a master’s degree in Art. In 1999, she established her own studio, Ideaslocus, in Sitges. In 2009, she founded Artecrearte, with the idea of recycling discarded elements to create accessories, fashion items, and decorations, leaving a mark. She has participated in recycled art exhibitions such as Recicla Madrid (Caixaforum), Mercantic (Sitges), Lab Art (Asturias), Centre Grabrielet (Formentera), and Drap-Art (CCCB and Sala Perill in Barcelona, Instituto Cervantes in Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo, Re:NEW Festival in Pittsburgh…).

Currently, she combines her creative work with the management of several gallery-stores in Formentera and artivism to reduce plastic pollution in nature, conducting workshops, editing books, organizing exhibitions, and encouraging people to consume less plastic and keep the beaches in her surroundings clean in general.

Through his work, he brings a critical and committed perspective to the relationship between the individual and their environment.

His photographs and videos establish a dialectical relationship between the private and the public, the personal and the political, the individual and the social; exploring the boundaries between these different realms and shedding light on the mechanisms that operate in our societies.

This is a reflection on the blurred traces of the constructed landscape, analyzing various social processes.

The landscape, intervened by architecture, hides revealing traces of the transformations that have occurred.

Thus, the landscape acts as an archive, as a palimpsest, as a memory to be updated in the present.

Just like the landscapes, the individuals who inscribe themselves in it also speak to us, also communicate with us; simply through their way of being-in-the-world and presenting themselves before it.

Therefore, following the principle of documentary photography by Walker Evans, the photographer must “accompany the model in their act of representation.”

Through his images, the individual reveals traits about themselves, their origins, and their present situation; about their history as a biography.

Nourathar is a studio formed by Marta Rupérez Molenveld (Madrid, 1977) and Caen Botto (Buenos Aires, 1970).

In their work, they explore the relationship between humans and technology through mixed-reality proposals that combine digital techniques with proto-cinematic artifacts.

Mecanisme del Present Perpetu presents an analogy between the “illusion of time” and the optical illusion contained in the piece.

Like other works by the duo, this piece is built from the encounter between the physical and the virtual.

In this way, it highlights the ability of technology to construct our conception of the world through the conditioning of perception. Caen Botto is an intermedia artist, musician, and researcher.

He graduated from USAL as a Music Therapist in 1992; he also studied Ethnomusicology (CMMF) and Electroacoustic Composition (UNQUI).

His activities range from research and teaching to technical and creative direction in artistic and corporate productions.

In 2000, he created Universomente, an independent laboratory for the research and production of experimental audiovisual techniques for interactive communication.

He has lived in Ibiza since 2013, where he co-founded the audiovisual creation studio Nourathar.

Marta Rupérez Molenveld is an independent manager, producer, and curator specializing in art and technology.

She received her Master’s in Visual Arts Administration from NYU in 2003 (Fulbright scholarship).

He studied Art History, Painting, and Printmaking Techniques at the National School of Fine Arts in Montevideo (now the University of Montevideo) until the military dictatorship closed the school.

In 1970, he moved to Spain and traveled through several European countries and North Africa.

In 1972, he discovered Ibiza, and in 1976, he traveled to Formentera for the first time, temporarily residing in El Pilar de la Mola, where he met artists like Toni Tur “Gabrielet,” Guillermo Berrier, and Gilbert Herreyns. He has been settled in Barcelona ever since, balancing his artistic pursuits with the restoration and trade of antiques, specializing in ethnological objects from Asia and Africa. In 2009, he returned to Formentera, where he has lived and worked ever since.

Hombrelópez, graphic designer, urban artist, cultural agitator, and lovable human being, has been living in Menorca for many years. He gets into trouble whenever he can, creating, designing, exhibiting, and organizing events, either for fun or for work, and in the best case, combining both.

Anita Burdon
Tomelloso, 1977
Instagram: @streetartesticfart

With a sculptural mindset, she combines artistic project management with her own work production. The decomposition of volume is the goal.

In her work, collage and sculpture merge. Passionate about the discourse of her work, she can be incendiary or put out fires.

At first, our bodies submerged in a fluid experienced a vertical rush upwards, equal to the weight of the fluid we displaced. In the end, our mass will be less than our equivalent volume in the fluid.

I think it was something like…
E = Pe V = pf g V

Thank you Ἀρχιμήδης ὁ Συρακόσιος

Isidre Mateu is a versatile artist who works in painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry.

He lives in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, where he actively participated in the advocacy of the El Borsí Platform for the neighborhood, which succeeded in recovering this building as a cultural infrastructure for the local community.

He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts Sant Jordi, specializing in painting and printmaking, and obtained his degree equivalence in 2010.

He has worked as a professor of Graphic Arts, participated in numerous group exhibitions, held several solo exhibitions, and contributed to the organization of international shows, such as the exchange between Catalan and Japanese artists and the Marrakesh Art Show, organized by the Spanish Cultural Institute.

“Materializing the idea with a minimal number of formal elements and sometimes with the participation of found pieces and fragments has been an interesting exercise, always avoiding, when possible, the simple and easy solution.”

Originally trained in Architecture, the Iranian artist Boback discovered his creative calling in the world of sculpture.

In his metal sculptures and paintings made from bitumen, one can see his interest in natural materials and the use of space as raw material.

Guided by his personal experience, he creates works of art that express his internal struggle with memory and place.

His compositions express a powerful geometric language that incorporates both void and matter.

An inherent yearning for a sense of belonging and connection is evident in his public sculptures in Europe and the United States.

Whether working on a monumental stainless steel sculpture or an intimate painting with bitumen or watercolor, his focus is on compositional expressions using geometric exuberance as an expression of the world he sees around him.

Boback exhibits his work in galleries across Europe, the United States, and Mexico.

His monumental public sculptures can be seen around the world in places such as Paris (France), Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and cities in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington.

In her adolescence, Indira began to take an interest in architecture and developed a deep passion for photography. Later, she obtained her degree and immersed herself in photography.

Since then, she has followed her passion for photography with explorations in other formats such as mixed media, installation, experimental video, and since 2015, metal weaving.

Her work has been exhibited internationally in both collective and solo presentations, including The de Young Museum, Root Division, Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco Symphony, in the United States, and at the National Council of Culture and the Arts, Pablo Neruda Museum House in Chile. She was invited to the VII Biennale of Art and Design in Spain and the Gallery of the Fontecchio International Airport in Italy.

“My work dwells in the relationship between social fabric and interaction, creating a conversation and narratives of stories to find new meaning.”

“Art gives me the freedom to explore my inner self by juxtaposing it with my external self.”