'The eel': the dialogue between Paula Bonet's painting and literature

The Can Framis Museum in Barcelona hosts the exhibition 'The eel. Flesh as painting and painting as a mirror'. This exhibition is one of the most important in Paula Bonet 's career, as it reviews and expands her previous project, 'The eel', which saw the light for the first time in 2021. Now, with new works and a look renewed, Paula Bonet proposes an in-depth tour of her pictorial and literary work.

Paula Bonet, born in Vila-real in 1980, is recognized both for her artistic work and her literary work. In this exhibition, the artist fuses both disciplines, showing how painting and words can establish a constant dialogue. Her work explores the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, and in this case, she does so with a theme that directly challenges the female experience. In L'anguila, Bonet addresses issues such as sexuality, childbirth, abortion, abuse and violence, topics that connect deeply with his own life and artistic career.

This exhibition, which will be open to the public from October 8 to January 19, 2025, is presented in three main areas: Heritage, Carn and Painting. These sections are designed to guide the visitor through an immersive experience, not only visual, but also reflective. In addition to the large-format paintings and diptychs, the exhibition includes sound points that reproduce fragments of his autobiographical novel, 'L'anguila' (Anagrama, 2021), creating a deep link between the written word and the pictorial expression. The artist thus manages to transfer the narrative from the book to the painting.

'La herencia', 2019

In the words of the artist, this project is a reflection on the body and its relationship with the world: "I claim the space of land that belongs to me, the air that I must be able to breathe as long as I live". This statement highlights the importance that Bonet gives to the body as a space of memory, experiences and resistance. His works, worked with solvents such as turpentine and Sansodor, convey a certain violence, visible in the battered textures of the fabrics, which dialogue with the themes of pain and overcoming present in his work.

This exhibition is also the culmination of a cycle in his artistic career, a project that began more than two years ago and which, finally, finds its most complete expression in Can Framis. The original exhibition was presented in 2021 at the La Nau Cultural Center of the University of Valencia, but this new version includes unpublished works and an expansion of its exploration of the female figure. The large faces of the women who have marked his plastic work appear again, but this time with a renewed force, violent and shocking.

The exhibition also coincides with another relevant exhibition in Girona, dedicated to Roser Bru, one of Paula Bonet's great influences. This collaboration between the Vila Casas Foundation and the Girona Art Museum creates an artistic bridge between the careers of two fundamental artists in the contemporary art scene. Bru, who deeply influenced Bonet during his stay in Chile, is presented here as a reference in the struggle for the visibility of women in art, a central theme in Bonet's work as well.

'La pintura', 2020