Mary Pratts The victory of pink

Marria Pratts (Barcelona, 1988) summons all possible prejudices. Her work sells, she often paints pink and she is a young artist who remembers disruptive episodes of the avant-garde. Burn the canvas, add neons and practice dirty painting. Everything exudes a grunge sensibility. To put it very quickly, the problem is that we have already experienced this. Dreams of authenticity, praise of unbridled creativity and praise of expressiveness that remind us of the eras of a resurrected painting. It could be a passing revival.

However, the works he makes catch like the hit songs. His is a commissioned painting. The quick seduction makes you suspicious of a job that doesn't hide the euphoria. Repeat the strokes that suggest ghosts, in groups or all together. A resource that borrows both from consumer music and from the most sophisticated modern painting. Repeat and repeat. It cannot be denied that he has found the tone. Even now that he has translated the ghosts into sculptures planted in the middle of the Hall of Mirrors.

The Liceu has welcomed them with a bewildering empathy. 1 Sardana 3 Fantasmes (2023) gathers sculptures that recall these very genuine beings from Marria Pratts painting. Its sculptural condition is both solid and fragile. Like everything in this artist's work. Having modeled them using the hydroforming technique, they have the same consistency as a balloon inflated with helium. Flonges and about to take off in the sky. Now, however, in the middle of the room, they have the appearance of a sculpture of those made to spend the days in a public park. His glory is not eternal. They are not guilty, not even detestable, despite the fact that they have a withdrawal from the characters of Mori el Merma, the spectacle with which Miró evoked Ubú roi. These ghosts of Marria Pratts are one step away from being monuments. If we think of the monument as a place from which to look and stand in this public space, ghosts are the ideal figures. A pink monument is already quite a victory.