I.- The history of art is an arrow that sets in motion different scenarios of visual representation; However, plastic art manifests itself to us from its fixation, allowing its traffic to be shown to us through stillness. The suspended flight and the universe like a cloth on the ceiling, like a dark scroll. A stopped time that is therefore still and in motion. In the artistic work that Lluís Carulla Ruiz presents at the Cadaqués Gallery, which was the gateway to the highest international manifestations of concrete art, as for the members who are part of this trend, art moves even when it is outside. of its context. Art, not history or event, is movement for them. Concrete art, moving away from the classic separations between idea and experience, original and mimesis, form and function, poetry and science, made a great effort to add rationality and beauty. He also knew how to put the cold and abstract data of names and their limited and harmonious combinations on the same level with the research on the unlimited, consubstantial to all research. The development of this art of analysis was as impractical and speculative as it was more effective in the formal aesthetic solutions of architecture and industrial objects that populated cities and homes in the long positive and humanist revolution that occupied much of the world. modern life of the 20th century. That in the comings and goings of critical nihilism in the face of academicism where every revolt ends and that in the midst of the subordination of art to the rule of history, an artist continues to achieve such high profits, it never ceases to amaze who subscribes to this with the spirit of also invite present viewers. However, open as we are, I would like to put face to face, for a moment, in order to force comparison and choice, the drifts of the free objects of neo-Dada, a century later, and the pure formalizations of abstract and concrete neoplasticism. And I will give as terminal examples the madness of non-reason in both cases and the purism of non-irrationality. First in the playful, metaphorical, ironic, technological and haughty architecture of the metropolises, or later, in contrast, the formal, linear, rigorous, environmental and integrated architecture in small rural or coastal towns with deep-rooted cultural traditions. It can, in fact, be objected that what is characteristic of architecture is not what is characteristic of art.
II.- The art practiced by Lluís Carulla Ruiz reminds me of the great moments in the history of forms: the plan in opposition to perspective, the superpositions in a two-dimensional plan from other times, the mental movement of the artist and the experiment in the hands of the visitor. Also, the movement and the play of colors that modify and differentiate any given surface. Its objects are part of the movement because the movement is within the static. It is not about a visual representation of shapes and forms with words, but rather what is internal to existence reaches us. After all, life is movement and rhythms that seek a balance between many other systems. Without differentiating textual language from visual language, we should agree on which are the autonomous rules and which are the common and universal ones. The shape of the sculptural objects presented here could be divided into two groupings: sinuous and rectilinear. In some I see the abstraction of physical and poetic laws; in the others, the organization of mathematics. In other words, the lyrical and the epic. Who knows if that is why the first ones have a movement close to nature, to the sinuosity of growth in light and the wear and tear of natural elements in struggle. While in straight lines, the movement of history is imposed through superpositions of plans. In one, the creative force; and in the other, reflection.
The art of Lluís Carulla Ruiz derives from an internal tension where what is measurable and orderable can also be a figure of dance, and vice versa. Its language both thinks about what is in front of us and provokes a movement to place the viewer in another unprecedented space of representation. We should be able to see a drama of the psychological sense and a drama of the sense of forms. The human subject is very present. That may be why color theory is expressed with such purity.
III.- In conclusion: in a literal sense, the work of Luis Carulla Ruiz takes sides with the great contributions of concrete art and its zero degree. We are in a renewal of a neo-avant-garde style away from expressionist exaggerations and deconstructive drift. It is inscribed in history and once again takes up the experiments and sensitivity of an impure, artistic search. From this objective, an allegorical sense is deployed, a positive idea of art as a form and as an experiment in sensitivity and, equally, of knowledge. The artist acquires a noble moral vicissitude: you must make art and, in an anagogical sense, you not only produce objects but you must aspire for these works to transform the experience of reality and merge a reality. Art is the substance, not a tool. Art affects us, it moves us. Living next to a work of art, in this case by Lluís Carulla Ruiz, living with it, makes us different from how we were. Art does not live in a living room, but in the room of being. The reader will have noticed that we have opposed a strictly instrumental conception. The moving sculptures of Lluís Carulla Ruiz stir stagnant waters. In a moment, the static space is revived. Like words or phrases, visual cells take on an activity such as contemplative thought. A still dynamism. Here, a dynamic stillness, bearer of memory. Some are like dancers’ borders, others are gestural brushstrokes, and others are like celibate mechanical rotations in the manner of Man Ray and Duchamp. I would say that it is visual material that takes a place in the mind and that energizes art in space… because we are language in a physical and psychic, cosmic and social world. No separation. Without bases. Art and technique, poetry and science.
