Silences
SilenceS
Carme Riera
From a reading of the "Book of Tea" by Kakuzo Okakura (a little jewel), I started some works in 1995 and since then a long journey about Taoism and its philosophy.
I admire their deep respect, harmony and balance between art and nature, reflected in their famous gardens, among which is the sober and austere architecture of the House of Tea room, dedicated exclusively to the tea ceremony. This space also means the house of the vacuum or the asymmetric where the truly essential resides.
I am interested in their Zen spirit of cult to the beauty of the small things of home and great simplicity.
These small works are my interpretation of the House of Tea room after a visit to Japan. I've made a several series about this topic.
"Tea house and gardens"
Artists have always shown interest in Tea
Ramón Casalé,Art Critics’ International Association
In 2000 in the Café Schilling in Barcelona, Carmel Riera presented a sort of exhibition performance named “Te.. rtúlia imaginària”(Imagined tea gathering), with works like Teherborium.
In summarizing the opinions given by different authors on her works considering them as being: intimate, spontaneous, sensitive reasonable, natural, imaginative, full of light, of intuition. All very interesting but, among these and many others, we would perhaps choose only one: honesty. Without her honesty this interrelation woman artist
would no longer be true. In other words she is honest towards us and her work
"Around the bowl"
"Al voltant del Bol"
Rosa Maria Malet,Crítica de Arte
Led to a more intense level, the surprise of the contrast between what is possible and what impossible
can lead us to a dramatic situations, such as the hanging men with tied hands, that seems to you they infiltrate in the quiet room where tea is drunk.
Carme Rivera The gift of silence and meditation
Ramón Casalé,
Art Critics’ International Association
As this artist is specially interested in all that has to do with tea, she exhibited a series of objects related to tea, be it through collage with tea paper or cloth bags, brought from or bought in different countries she has been to all over the world, as with books related to the ceremony of having tea.
"Gestual"
Carme Rivera The gift of silence and meditation
Ramón Casalé,Art Critics’ International Association
As this artist is specially interested in all that has to do with tea, she exhibited a series of objects related to tea, be it through collage with tea paper or cloth bags, brought from or bought in different countries she has been to all over the world, as with books related to the ceremony of having tea.
In search of long lost time
Carlota Caulfield,
Poet. Lecturer, Berkeley
Carme Riera, in her “in search of long lost time” becomes a confessional poet in this work based on an imagined social gathering with her great-grandfather.
If Taoists and Buddhists considered the ceremony of tea part of their religion in the XVth century, Carme Riera today uses empty tea bags to create a series of her original new works,
"es - Zen - as"
From Marcel Proust to Kakuzo Okakuta (the poems object and Carme Riera’s imagined social gatherings )
Carlota Caulfield,Poet. Lecturer, Berkeley.
Catalan painter Carme Riera has always been prone to giving new roles to traditional objects when placing them in her works As ? Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Valentine Hugo and Meret Oppenheim, Riera discovers, invents and recreates objects in our daily life; changing them into poetic objects, based on: ancient books, stones, eggs, and empty tea bags which, through her hands, acquire a new dimension, a special singular beauty that overcomes natural beauty.
Riera’s work though, never loses its metaphoric and symbolic irony.
