Adrià Ciurana: a reflection of our time

The exhibition 'Adrià Ciurana. M'abrigo de terra', at the Museu de l'Empordà, an exploration of the short artistic career of this creator from Empordà, son of the writer Maria Angels Anglada. The two curators have been his two good friends and workshop colleagues, the artist Jordi Mitjà and the graphic designer Manel Gràvalos, who have read it to us with great sensitivity, ordering its themes based on the concepts he was working with, such as play, death and identity.

Ciurana, in the words of Eudald Camps, practiced "earthly angelology"; with a sly spirit - Emporda irony - he was able to refer to the most transcendent subjects, looking at death from end to end, with the challenge of crossing all kinds of limits.

His compositions become 21st century vanities, such as the magnificent 'Crispetes' series or the 'Hypnosis' series. Play and experimentation are constantly present, both in the creation process and in the titles of the works, as is the case with 'Games to postpone death', made of bones he found on his long walks. In fact, these works can also be considered a vanitas.

‘Hipnosi’, David Ciurana (2014)

The screw case carries the weight of the past and memory, through the symbol of the glass screw. And the self-exploration sestenia in all facets, his body, making molds of his face, or his penis, his identity, burning or diluting his ID or his psychological interior, with the disease represented by a bunch of blisters of tablets in the work of 2006.

His pictorial references are also present in works such as Sant Jeroni, in fact a self-portrait, with a large mountain in the background in the style of the romantic Friedrich, or in the Chaplain from the town goes to the city, a repurposed work of Random encounter, where after a circular process of painting and polishing, like a kind of Baudelarian semper eadem, Francis Bacon resonates. But if there is an artist who we could say accompanied him intermittently, with this internal bohemia of doing what one pleases, it is Joan Paradís, a creator also from Emporda who was very present in the Figueres scene at the end of the 90s, until 2019, the date of his death, and that inspired the steps of the generation of younger artists.

This exhibition and the accompanying catalog are a starting point that should lead us to future new explorations of Ciurana's universe, in which we feel represented because it speaks to us of our contemporaneity, our fragilities and challenges .

Adrià Ciurana's work, brave and honest, is crying out to enter the national collection and be present in the new revisions of postmodernity in our country. In his case, person and artist form a perfect symbiosis that cannot be destroyed, and it is the result of our times. We still want a lot more from Ciurana, and we need to make his work known throughout Catalonia and beyond our borders.

‘Jocs per ajornar la mort’, David Ciurana (2010)