Door one
The Surface
the studio of Nerea Vall
Nerea Vall (b. 1987, Cadaqués) works between a dry studio and a flooded one. The gallery above holds what survives the drying rack; the door below holds everything else — the studio she keeps underwater, arranged and rearranged like a house she is always moving into.
The works are pigment, salt and wax. The world is code, current and memory. She considers both true.
0 – 40 fathoms · sunlight
This is the room where I keep beginnings — every canvas starts as this exact colour. Visitors are asked to swim slowly and leave the surface unlocked behind them.
40 – 200 fathoms · twilight
Halfway down I hang the unfinished things. The pressure is good for them. What the surface calls "abandoned," the twilight calls "curing."
200 – 550 fathoms · midnight
Everything that glows in this room made its own light. That is the entry requirement. The jellyfish are the docents; follow one and it will show you what I could not paint.
You have reached the bottom of the world I could build so far. It is not finished; oceans never are. Surface with me — or stay, the water keeps no hours.
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