Interview/Photography SøCreative Director: Chris Saint Sims Jaume Prohens Fiol is one of the founding figures of the Felanix Nite De L’Art festival, as well as a PUNK attitude within the arts, discarding the romantic excesses of modern hypnotic and typical Western success. If you visit Felanix during its Sunday market, its hard to miss Jaume holding court, either casually in his arts space, shaded from the light sat in his rocking char like an installation deep in thought, or at the bakery next door drinking coffee, surrounded by people and enthusiastically conversing on a philosophical level. Prohens is a character with an energy that’s simmering but steady. One of those creatives you are not quite sure where the conversation will go, and how far the energy will rise. In the shady streets of Felanix where the elegant traditional building sit, somewhat run down on the long winding and classical high street, Jaume Prohens arts space hides its self from the Mediterranean sun on the corner of 2 small roads. Here it observes unassumingly the passers by and those who venture in at the front door curiously. Both building and Jaume represent a simple life as a success in its self. This simplicity discovered reveals an allure of grandness in the lucidity. SoEdited visit Jaume one late morning to converse and delve into his existence. SO The Felanix Nite De L’Art is extremely popular, and for a very sleepy non tourist town it surprisingly has a huge popularity during its fiestas, when thousands of people come to party and explore the many pop-up art events and parties. It’s an enchanting place. JP The Felanix Art Nit is not an established event, it is more of a tradition, and one season it could just not happen. But since it first began in 2007 it has a growing popularity. Felanix has an avoidance of commerciality or commitment. The artists in this area exist without much but the love of art and simplicity of living, they don’t even need or want the public. People don’t need art, it is more a way to know people and communicate. But at the same time the Felanix community can be very reserved and laid back. SO The collaboration and the communication are an interesting aspect of art in Felanix that brings people together. Witnessing the art community in Felanix, it is not driven by financial gain, altho artists do need to generate a financial living, but they are not dictated buy it here. JP On making the decision that I do not belong to a commercial world, but of course I want to sell my painting up to a certain point. Selling art for me is not the most rewarding aspect of doing the work. I sell my works for actually not much, my life isn’t an excessive or expensive one. I can live with practically nothing, even with little food, and I have done in the past. That wasn’t a bad period of my life, it was an excellent training for life. Now I have removed the intermediate figure from my art, the galleries and those agents, I get to know the people between me and my works. Also not having to pay a middle man or deal in that corporate way. What that middle person wants is a bit of my freedom and commercialise me. What they see here is an expression of my freedom, and transforming it into a commercial product. It’s a symbolic freedom that the middle person does not have. SO Why did you come to the decision to shun a so called financially successful career in the arts that often relies on the involvement of galleries. JP There was a time I decide that I didn’t belong to the commercial side of art, and I wanted to commit an artistic and commercial suicide, which is a taboo in todays heavy financial and commercial world. I know that success exists, but I didn’t want to be a part of that type of success. I love to be at the mercy of whatever can come from one day to the next. I didn’t want to transform my life in to a business or enterprise. I renounced to have a commercial profit on my actual existence. SO Tell me about your gallery, its has a wonderful atmosphere to it, with the light falling through the windows, its high ceilings and an amber colour to the walls with the original typical Mallorcan tiled floor. JP it’s not a gallery It’s an open space. It’s a luxury space that I don’t actually have open most of the time, except 4 hrs a week. I open only during the Felanix market on a Sunday, and when people visit the market they can walk through the space, talk to me then disappear through the back door, and that’s ok. I don’t generally talk to them, but if they want to chat I’m here to have a conversation. The building itself is around 180 years old and is on the main street of Felanix, the classical town center. Originally the building was for olive oil production and storage. When my parents had the building it was then a shoe shop for 40 years. In 2007 I took the building over and it became the open space it is today, retaining much of the original features, its high ceiling and original grand staircase. You walk through the building from front to back, its open planned now with the doors removed but still retaining the rooms. SO What is you inspiration and what is behind your work. JP I did my first collection at 20, this was during the 1980s. I was living and studying at the ‘Facultat de Belles Arts’ University of Barcelona for 6 years, and then I remained in Barcelona for another 6 years. During that time of the 1980s it was a very expressive period. All my friends were poets, writers painters, this wild creativity was just in the air. It was a very bohemian period with many nationalities in Barcelona once the dictatorship collapsed. Spain had come out of a depression from this dictatorship that lasted over 30 years and ended in 1975. All of a sudden Spanish people were free to express how they wanted to be. Over time many of these liberated people fell away from an expressive life style and desired more financial success, security or things that were not purely creative. Originally my works were more figurative as I was inspired by Miguel Barcelo who is also from Felanix. A fantastic painter with a focus on earthly stuff, representative, figurative way of expressing. I followed this inspiration for quite some time and expressed my own creativity through this inspiration. But what you are looking at now, and how I paint now came from my divorce. I have had several experiences in life that brought me to a point where I wanted to carry on creatively, but I had to renounce knowing what I know and start completely from scratch. I metaphorically killed myself several times. And this killing of myself creatively, I renounced to paint nature anymore. This was also the time I stoped to separate my life from my creative work, and really merged them both together. At this moment of time I was also becoming a farther, and my approach to painting completely altered. I had someone who pushed me towards this new expression, my little son. Since his birth he has became my teacher, my maestro. And still now as a musician he inspires me so much. SO You dedicate your work to the abstract painting now, but also experiment with sculpture JP Yes my sculpture is a diversion from my abstract painting. My sculptures are a way of not having to hang items on the wall. My sculptures can be in the middle of the room and invade the space, rather than hanging on the walls of it. Abstract sculpture is fascinating to me and closer to architecture without having to have people inside or cater for them. My last sessions of sculpture were attempting to do something from the discarded and cut out items of carpenters wood. There are lots of carpenters in Mallorca and these shapes of discarded wood became interesting inspiration for me. I could do fascinating works from thrown away items, and reinvent them into abstract artistic sculptural pieces. These started small and I worked up to larger scale. It was very satisfying to sell several of these from the collection. SO It has now been a period of time since you picked up a paint brush or a piece of wood to create. So what actually have you been doing. JP In the meantime what have I done. Well I studied philosophy as I really wanted to know things. I had an accident 2 years ago, this I believe I was being told something, I kind of hit a wall and had to face life. Questions arrived: Whats wrong with me? Whats wrong with my relationships? What is love? What is God? Why is everybody so ugly in the street, it’s so unbearable! I had to know all these things that I hadn’t realised or questioned before. But there isn’t really a time scale for these questions, or answers. I have spent time discovering different philosophers over the past 2 years, and it has been rewarding, fascinating, enlightening and time consuming. SO Philosophy took you away from painting for the past 2 years, but you have told me a roll of canvas has recently arrived back in your life. Will philosophy be more precent now in your works, and on these new canvases? JP Well I am going to go larger with these new canvases! When I started abstract they were small works of 50/50. But the temptation to go big is enormous. Im also working at fasting the things I don’t like about myself, if I’m lucky! What I have found is that I allow myself to guide myself with intuition. But also one of my driving forces is boredom. Boredom is the best teacher for me. When boredom comes I go out and do something different. Or change the strategy and say “How do I get joy out of doing this”. Or change the medium, try doing something that I don’t know how to do. This is the way I find joy again, through boredom that takes me to intrigue and inspiration. Jaume Prohens Fiol Carrer Major 38 Felanitx. Mallorca Spain T - +34 643 846 481 Photography: Christopher Sims
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