Sala Maragall. November 2005

The painting exhibition of Carme Bassa proposes a poetic glance to the world that surrounds us, either revealing the soul of the daily objects coming from the dialogue which they conform with their shared presence and the emotional load given to them by our mutual coexistence; or in the cosmic connection of a universal dialogue that approximates concepts and representations, approaching different cultures while avoiding both geographic and cultural borders. 

One can propose a thread to catch all the complexity of this artist’s work, who observes the world that troubles her from a feminine but not feminist perspective. Daring to use this word despised by a culture of clear macho connotations, and putting on the canvas another voice to which infinite echoes are added. 

WORKING (RE)SEARCH. Her works never start from a premeditated concept, rather is the constant dialogue with the painting, during the working process that develops its contents. The contact with the materials, while painting, makes her sensitivity flowing in a natural way, addressing all her inner drive to the hand in charge to represent her feelings. On the other hand, this reveals her as a tireless artist when it comes to explore the unknown to catch the unexpected. 

The technical procedure used by Carme Bassa in the elaboration of her art is the traditional encaustics (beeswax mixed with resin and pigments). This fact alone begins to shape her discourse that will also be developed in the contents of her work: the awareness of the past. 

UNIVERSAL SYMBOLS. The incisions that draw signs and symbols of a both private and universal world, bring to the memory the human necessity of the stroke, of the track. Her paintings could become walls for the souls housel, or an atemporal mirror for the permanence of the gesture. Cave paintings, symbols of ancient cultures or drawings of Paul Klee, all in all, the magic of being conscious that there is a code of coincident communication exists when one learns to listen and to participate in synergy. 

GODDESSES. The feminine representations that Carme Bassa makes are done from the point of view of a woman interested for the woman world. Accomplice as well of sharing this world, she sublimates it whereas she has chosen the symbol of a woman who represents the divinity, recovering, in addition, ancestral roots. 

Her goddesses evoke forms of the pre-Hellenic classic world, concretely those of the proto-Attic style like, for example, the Lady of the Beasts. Drawn in geometries that determine the synthesis capacity, with vibrated lines that suggest the force, and within an aesthetics that outlines an identity formed by a strongly Mediterranean legacy, looking forward to recovering the sacred aspect of painting as well. 

LIGHT OF THE MEMORY. The sensitivity of this artist leads her to a poetic investigation of the world that surrounds her. Carme Bassa pours into her works something that comes from the most deepest part of her and that’s why the cultural substrate of everything she’s lived is shown, evoking Pompeii’s frescoes in the windows of its painted architectures, cloisters and drawings of ancestral cultures floating in the landscapes of the memory, enlightened by the closed light of a memory. An old memory, because of the aging character that she gives to the treatment of her pieces, but also very alive, because of the contemporary character of her views on the woman place in the current society. 

Pilar Giró (Bonart magazine, November 2005)