LA CAPELLA
The Chapel
The Chapel is a preserved area of the former Casa Martí, which was used for conducting small religious services. Today, it is possible to observe the original dome and mouldings from the 18th century. Other areas of the Museum also conserve such ornamental elements, in order to integrate the building’s past with its current use.
In 1997, the artist Tom Carr (Tarragona, 1956) held the “Aqua et tempus” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of Tarragona. As part of this exhibition, he decided to place this installation of the same name in the Chapel. Carr uses order and geometry as key elements in his sculpture.
The exhibition Aqua et Tempus had an antithesis, Ignis et tempus, which was presented in parallel at Graz Museum.
Order, geometry and a preference for formal minimalism are patent in this installation by Tom Carr; forms such as squares, triangles and circles are presented in very diverse typologies, more or less fragile in nature, combining the voids, air and light that penetrate and surround them.
Tom Carr (Tarragona, 1956) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Sant Quirze del Vallès. A lecturer at the Massana School in Barcelona, he has also lectured at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York and at the Galician Centre of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compestela, among others.
He has always been particularly attracted to three-dimensional art, natural and architectural space and sculpture. For this reason, from the outset, the concepts of space and time have been constant themes in his work, for example the installation produced for area 10 of the Miró Foundation, which was his first exhibition in 1981. Here he began what would later become a constant in his work: maximum expression using a minimum of elements.
The materials used were taut canvasses, yarn and painted batons; later they would become shadows, reflected light using mirrors, slides projected over façades and interiors and onto small objects.
From 1983, parallel to the installations, he started to develop a sculptural work based on architectural elements: towers, stairways, arcs, ziggurats and walls, using wood and then painting it afterwards.
In a more recent phase, the forms are simplified: discs, cylinders, star-shaped poligons, helicoids and spirals reach out to the world of the symbolic, materialising the spirit: time, being, the centre.