JOSEP MARIA RIERA I ARAGÓ (Barcelona, 1954). Untitled, 1998. Mixed media and collage on canvas. Signed and dated in the lower right-hand corner. Size: 129,5 x 182,5 cm. The poetics of the absurd beats with intensity in Riera i Aragó s "poetic machinism". His interest in transforming machines into living sculptures that express the idea of flight or diving originated in the eighties, and in the nineties (the decade in which he produced the painting in question) this interest had already spread to a variety of techniques, not only in sculpture (graphic art, collage, works on paper...) Wheels and propellers suggest an impossible journey, a flight that is only possible with the imagination. Riera i Aragó somehow picks up on the Dadaist spirit and his passion for creating useless machines, but his is a passion for a very particular type of machine, which has become a rubric, so that his art is recognisable whatever the medium used. A painter and sculptor, Josep Riera i Aragó trained at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in Barcelona. He made his individual debut in 1981 at the Artema gallery in Barcelona. Two years later he took part in the Salón de Otoño in that city, and since then he has shown his work all over the world, in leading galleries in Spain, Mexico, Holland, Israel, Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Colombia and the United States. Particularly noteworthy are the solo exhibitions he has held at the Musée de Ceret (France, 1989), the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (1993), the Oostende Museum of Modern Art (Belgium, 1997), the Joan Prats Gallery in New York (1998), the Tassende Gallery in Los Angeles (2003) and the Museum of Aalst in Belgium (2006), among others. Since 1983, Riera i Aragó has developed his plastic discourse around machinery, with a symbolic language marked by an interest in air and sea transport, which he sees decontextualised, separated from their original function. At the same time, his plastic language has been enriched by the deepening of the line/plane and empty/full dialogue. Never repetitive, each "machine" he creates evokes, without pathos or condescension, a clear and comprehensive vision of humanity. With a visual vocabulary limited to simple forms reminiscent of zeppelins, submarines or aeroplanes, Riera i Aragó develops a fertile iconography charged with meaning which, endowed with a clear irony, speaks of the absurd recklessness of man s creations and of the poetic justice that results when these creations turn against him. His work should be understood as a global story, which is related to languages as disparate as astronomy, botany, mathematics and mysticism, and which offers the spectator the possibility of entering a particular and highly lyrical universe, where reality and fiction cease to be opposing categories. Riera i Aragó is currently represented at the MACBA, the Joan Miró, La Caixa and Vicent Van Gogh foundations, the Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, the Ceret and Reattu Museum in Arles in France, the Otani Museum in Japan and the Heilbronn Museum in Germany, among many others.