Page 138 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

MIRON, MIXED PAINTING ON COUCHE CARDBOARD 7.1X6.7 IN. | 18X17 CM. NINE, PAINTING AND COLLAGE ON PAPER 11.4X15.7 IN. | 29X39.7 CM.
FINE ART CULTURE PAJAROS EN LA CABEZA, PAINTING ON PAPER 29.7X25.8 IN. | 75,5X65,5 CM. NARIGUT, PAINTING AND COLLAGE ON PAPER AND PLYWOOD 15X19.6 IN. | 38X50 CM.

VIAJE, PAINTING AND COLLAGE ON PAPER 10X12.4 IN. | 25,5X 31,5 CM.
ESPACIOS, PAINTING AND COLLAGE ON PAPER 13.2X16 IN. | 33,5X40 CM.
LA CIUDAD, OIL PAINTING ON CANVAS 45X57 IN. | 114X146 CM.
ESPACIO, DRAWING IN BLACK AND WHITE CHINESE INK AND PENCIL 19.6X25.9 IN. | 50X66 CM.

JUAN CANALS CARRERAS
Lives and work in Barcelona, Spain
https://www.artecanals.com | https://www.instagram.com/canalscarreras

Juan Canals Carreras, a Catalan surrealist artist who uses psychic
automatism as his main technique. Psychic automatism is a
method of creating art without the control of reason, aesthetic or
moral concerns, and external or internal influences. It is based on
the spontaneous expression of the subconscious mind and the
natural movement of the body. Canals recovers this procedure
from the original surrealist movement and applies it to different
media, such as painting, collage, engraving and sculpture. He does
not use any symbolic or archetypal system, but rather creates his
own iconography from random combinations of elements. He aims
to distance himself from reality as we have constructed it and to
create art from scratch. His works are characterized by gesturality,
chance and uniqueness. He has been faithful to this method
for decades, unlike most of his surrealist predecessors who
abandoned it after a short period. As the surrealist theorist André
Breton clarified when defining the surrealist movement: ‘pure
psychic automatism by means of which one proposes to express…
the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence
of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and
moral preoccupation’ (André Breton, What is Surrealism?).

It is noteworthy that Canals, being an artist with a wide trajectory,
always maintains the same interest in psychic automatism instead of
shying away from it, as happened with the vast majority of surrealist
artists in the 20th century. It is evident that he feels comfortable
in his particular annulment of reason in favor of creation. It is also
important to note that he has elaborated, without seeking it, his own
iconography, resulting from the omission of conventional realities
- internal and visible reality. After randomly converging various
strokes, pigments, cuts, and so on, almost identically through the
automatic procedure, our protagonist has found a particular and
unique arrangement of images that sometimes practically repeat
themselves . The fruit of his experimentation for decades has
led him to this discovery, remaining faithful to not falling into the
reproduction of realities.

136 WORLD of ART