Maternity, 2001

Miquela Vidal Barceló  

Fields (Majorca)

He began his studies in 1976, at the School of Applied Arts in Palma, alternating with classes at the private academies, Arcadia and Estudio D'arte, to continue at the Torculari Workshop, learning different techniques of graphic work and finally, learning different techniques of sculpture in the Calatrava. This passage through different schools add up to a total of ten years.

His first individual exhibition is in his hometown Campos, in what is now the plenary hall of the City Council, which in 1980 was an exhibition hall.

After this first exhibition, many others followed in different parts of Mallorca, Ibiza, Mahón and in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Alicante, Sitges, Pamplona, Logroño, Lérida, La Coruña and Seville. Abroad Rhodes and Athens (Greece), Geneva, Washington, Berlin, La Carouge (Switzerland), Montpellier (France), Ghent (Belgium), Moscow, Cyprus, Havana and Camagüey (Cuba). There have been 30 individual and more than a hundred collective.

He participated in different contests, between 1986 and 2001, stopping participating because large-format sculpture absorbed all his time and effort. She won 24 awards, highlighting the first Princess Sofia award.

In 2004, she was awarded the First Diploma of Honor, for her work and career in sculpture.

She has collaborated with different NGOs, and in a very special way with the AECC of the Balearic Islands.

Her works have illustrated posters, magazines and books. She has participated in biennials and art fairs, as well as in fashion shows, contributing her jewelry to the designs of her sister Isabel Vidal.

His sculptures in public spaces are in the Es Baluard Museum "L'altre meitat" and in front of the Treasury Delegation "Balladors" in Palma, Can Prunera Museum, in Sóller, "Retrat", in Paseo Colonia de Sant Jordi, "Salistre ", at the entrance of Campos, "Parella", in the Regional Hospital of Inca, "Dona", in Porreres, "La forja", in the roundabout of Llucmajor "A cau d'orella" and the sculpture group "Deliberants" that presides over the entrance to the City of Justice in Valencia. (It consists of 11 pieces.) He is currently teaching painting classes, since 2011, at the "sostre d'art" school.

In his 16th-century studio house, countless cultural events, performances, installations, microtheatre, reading and staging of "rondallas", fashion shows, artistic photography courses and eight collective exhibitions plus 17 individual ones have been held, all for love to art.

The key to art, with Miquella Vidal in the background

Many years ago, when we began to investigate what the human capacity to appreciate beauty consists of, the group of which I was then a member felt the need to solve an enigma that was considered indecipherable. We were warned enough; Alberto Portera told us, for example: one does not know and will never be able to know what that overturning of the soul that appears when we contemplate a painting, or a sculpture, or a building, or a sunset that overwhelms us consists of.

But we didn't listen.

Soon we stumble upon one of the main keys to aesthetics: there is no such thing as a single, solid, compact beauty. Just as the many colors of the rainbow eventually merge into one, white, what moves us and what, on the contrary, we hate, follows a multitude of keys, an algorithm of addition and subtraction whose depth is escapes us. But the founding fathers of experimental aesthetics showed us some of the ways to go. Following Eysenck, we detect that there are at least four conditions fused in each unique aesthetic experience. What we like we find beautiful, interesting, pleasant and original; everything at once and with each dimension on its own.

Useless wisdom, perhaps. The brain of any of us summarizes the long history of aesthetics, psychology and philosophical discourse in an exercise of a single moment. We were even able to measure it in the laboratory: in a matter of half a second, the mind decides. That painting, yes; that sculpted piece, no. Let's go to something else.

Half a second.

The first time I saw a work by Miquela Vidal, I needed that time to realize the obvious: that the very meaning of the intriguing search for beauty can be found in her materials brought to the canvas or raised in the air. Its sands that turn into books, its metals that overturn on gigantic hinges are the expression of the deepest, the map of the instantaneous scream that shakes us.

Picasso said that when one is young he is so throughout his life. It is a question of having what it takes to have; the rest, plenty.

He knew it from the first moment. When you are able to create beauty you will maintain that condition forever. Miquela Vidal has that gift that the gods gave her, or perhaps the demons; it is a condition of hers and she cannot get rid of it. Although the pompous gurus who run the market never find out, that's what art is.

Review by Camilo José Cela Conde