0 CommentsJon Banthorpe profiles five creatives who are defining Barcelona on the international scene.
JAIME HAYON
Designer
Jaime Hayon, designer extrordinaire, has his star firmly in ascendance right now, continually clocking up a series of head-turning and thought-provoking projects over the last three years, with no signs of abating.
A true character among designers, Hayon’s projects and persona are the product of an unsurprisingly eclectic background. In his early years, Jaime poured his obvious energy into Madrid’s burgeoning skateboarding scene. Following the sponsorship offer of an American label, he promptly moved to San Diego. Skateboarding, designing decks, and silk-screening T-shirts, he describes his year and a half in America as the beginning of his design sensibilities.
Returning to Madrid to embark on a course at the Istituto Europeo di Design, Hayon learned to develop further his unorthodox approach, albeit at odds with the traditional teachings of the school. Later offered the chance to attend Fabrica – Oliviero Toscani’s renowned institute and think tank in Treviso, Italy – Jaime quickly rose to become head of the design department. The period until his departure is described, by the designer, as not wholly an unhappy one, but more of a managerial position that became uncomfortable. In 2004, he left for Barcelona.
In a series of career-defining exhibitions, Hayon laid down the physical embodiment of his unique approach, fusing his artwork with ceramic sculptures and wall drawings at Mediterranean Digital Baroque in 2003, and Mon Cirque in 2005, both at the David Gill art gallery in London.
In the past two years Hayon has fired three distinct salvos across the bow of conventional design practice. Firstly, his bathroom collection for Artquitect in 2005 – a series of distinct, separate bathroom elements characterised by their slender legs, use of luxury finishes, and notions of bespoke and totally personal use.
Secondly comes the completion of his Showtime collection for Spanish manufacturer Bd Ediciones in 2006. This series of furniture gave form to the designer’s unique approach toward materials, combining leather with ceramics, and plastic. While the pieces convince you that there is something familiar in their form, they are at once beguiling in their strangeness.
Thirdly, but by no means lastly, there is our favourite stand of this year’s Milan Salone, Hayon’s installation for Bisazza – a wonderland of ceramic cactuses presided over by a giant, bejewelled Pinocchio figure. Fantastic.
More recently the designer has finished a number of stores for the design-conscious Camper shoe company, and embarked on a move to London. So, while strictly speaking he may no longer be a Barcelona resident there is something of a legacy to speak of. And besides, we don’t need much of an excuse to talk about our favourite designer.
MISS VAN
Graffiti Artist
French in nationality, Miss Van is the only non-Spaniard in our list of Barcelona creatives. Now based in the city, her place within the creative scene is cemented by regular appearances of her poupées [dolls] across the city’s walls.
While studying at art college in Toulouse in the early 90s, Miss Van began tagging walls with friends, teaming up with Mademoiselle Kat and forming the Hanky Panky Girls. It was here she first developed the beginnings of her signature girls – normally in various states of undress, and with a slightly sinister, sexual stare.
Traditional graffiti influences, such as writer Mode 2, as well as Vaughn Bode, are obvious in her early work, but, over time she has refined her characters into her own coquettish, pregnant, lipped poupées, describing them herself as “sexy, erotic images that will disturb or seduce people on the street”.
She moved to Barcelona around three years ago, abandoning France and its strict historic preservation laws that prevented a lot of graffiti writing, to what she describes as “the last place in Europe it was cool to paint”.
Seeing her next to her paintings you notice the dolls do evoke a sense of the artist herself, she even admits to a period of “dressing like my dolls”. They exude an ambiguity around their intent, and though they were one of the most recognisably feminine intrusions on a male-dominated graffiti scene, they received a lot of criticism, with some people objecting to the overtly girly sexuality they displayed, and actively crossing out the offending parts. Though the artist herself says “the idea of provocativeness has a part in the conception of my work, I have always liked painting a sexy doll in an appropriate place. I want to provoke strong reactions”.
FERNANDO AMAT
Architect
Fernando Amat is synonymous with design in Barcelona, and a well-known figure throughout the city as an architect and co-owner of the design store Vinçon.
Vinçon itself has occupied the classified Passeig de Gracia building for 66 years. Amat himself came to the business through his father and, in 1967, he re-invented the traditional store concept. The company describes the re-invention as a kind of rebirth, whereas Amat himself simply states that he saw the first Terence Conran store in London in the 70s, and has been trying to emulate it since.
This kind of understatement illustrates Amat’s self-depreciating demeanour, and part of what makes him so intriguing. As well as the casual atmosphere fostered in the Vinçon store[s] – food is allowed, as are dogs – Amat and his brother resurrected La Sala Vinçon, a non-profit exhibition space and performance space for art and design. This space, in turn, became the starting point in the careers of some notable Spanish artists such as Javier Mariscal. This only adds to the vigour and social relevance of the store, making Vinçon almost a concrete example of Amat’s aesthetic.
Another great aspect of the store’s personality is its carrier bag. Since the original logo bag by América Sánchez, the paper bags have featured a new design by various artists, including George Hardy, Pati Nuñez, Mariscal, and Barbara Kruger.
As an architect, Amat was recently asked by Camper to design the interior of the new Casa Camper hotel in the El Raval district. “The name is Casa Camper because the idea is that the guests use the hotel in the same way they would their house,” Amat explains. “I started out with a list of hotel mistakes and clichés. For example, I personally hate mini bars. Here, when guests are hungry, they can go to the downstairs lounge and grab a juice or a sandwich.” Amat also finds that most hotel rooms don’t offer enough space to hang clothes, so in each of the bedrooms at Casa Camper, there’s a row of hanger pegs along an entire wall. Each guest receives a key that opens two doors, one to the bedroom and bathroom, and the other to a ‘mini lounge’ across the hall. The lounge has a flat-screen TV, a pull-out couch and a Mexican hammock. Unsurprisingly, most of the furniture in the bedrooms and lounges comes from Vinçon.
PATRICIA AND VIRGILI
Musicians behind Easy Snap
Patricia and Virgili, of Easy Snap, first met while studying in Barcelona. At first the band was little more than an idea, the idea led to a song, and it was then that they set about putting form to the idea of Easy Snap. Think Cansei De Ser Sexy, or the New Young Pony Club, distilled into two crazy Spaniards.
Virgili’s tinkering with PCs has led to their form of infectious, turbo-driven, electro-pop style. The band cites arcade games, the Power Rangers, pizzas and the Goonies as their main inspirations, all delivered with a thick covering of adolescent rock posturing.
Unashamedly energetic, their music is enthusing the Barcelona underground where you can catch them live. Recorded material is scarce as they are yet unsigned, a hurdle this energetic duo is sure to overcome without a problem.
JOSE LUIS GUERIN
Film Director
Born in Barcelona in 1960, film director José Luis Guerin began his film-making with short- and medium-length features on 16mm and super 8, operating under the pressures of the Franco regime. At the surprisingly young age of 22, he released his first feature-length film Los Motivos du Berta, in black and white, and set in the stark landscape of Castilla. Its Spanish audience was restricted due to legal issues. Nonetheless, the film went on to win the Special Prize at the Berlin Forum in1983, placing Guerin on the international stage.
Currently teaching film at the University Pompeu Fabra, his love of film and its craft is obvious through his numerous interviews and discussions. In 1990, he released Innisfree, a documentary shot entirely on location in Ireland, describing the modern day situation in the ancestral home of director John Ford, who returned there to film The Quiet Man in 1952. The film has received criticism for its deliberately slow and static camera style, however, it proceeded to win the Best Spanish Film in the Sant Jordi awards in Barcelona.
Guerin’s latest work, En Construccion, a documentary based within a building flanked by a construction site, released in 2001, has received a host of awards within Spain. The neighbourhood in which the film is set, known as El Xino [roughly, Chinatown], stands opposite Barcelona’s gothic quarter and houses many immigrants, factory workers, prostitutes, and drug dealers [though the film gets away with eliding the fact that this is also the city’s most dangerous neighbourhood]. As the construction of the new building starts, workers find a Roman burial site and begin to excavate bodies, much to the diversion and fascination of the neighbours and passers-by. In these intrinsic moments the camera settles on a variety of characters who become the film’s nuclear family – two pot-smoking teens, who squat a local building until they are forced to move out; a philosophical Moroccan and an elderly Spanish man who get into several debates at lunchtime; a junk-collector who carries goods on his back; a brood of 10-year olds who build fortresses out of raw construction materials to the bemusement of the labourers; and a neighbourhood girl, who meets a construction worker while draping clothes on her balcony. The rest of the film is not easy to describe. Eventually, the new tenants start to move in to the building and change the shape of the neighbourhood. The film is characterised by it's static camera angle, only choosing to move in the final scene as the old residents leave the building, described as a moral choice by the director.
Guerin is also participating in the exhibition at the Spanish Pavilion, in this year’s Venice Biennale.
ILLUSTRATIONS Jon Banthorpe
