At first glance the erotically charged images of the painter Rita Martorell are troubling since they suggest two meanings simultaneously. This makes their reading a challenging interactive experiment of interpretation all the more fascinating because the digitally altered images are based on photographs of real things and real people transformed by the artist’s imagination. Thus the double entendre is itself doubled leading to a conflation of interdependent meanings.

Both of the new large scale groups of works in the show involve suggestive multivalent images whose interpretation depends on the viewer’s subjective psychology and experience. Both involve photographic transformation and digital imaging. One group is based on the figurative works on paper the artist has produced over the last decade transformed into monumental compositions of tattooed figures. The other presents mysterious erotically charged images resembling Rohrsach gestalts devised from symmetrical inkblots developed for psychological testing. These are monochrome in rose to violet range and feature exaggerated chiaroscuro lighting. Their origin in the pastel colored sheets she was given with the name Rita embroidered on them is not evident until the artist identifies the source of the astonishing, bizarre and sometimes grotesque images, all of which have strong associations with skin and body parts.

Rita Martorell Coderch was born in Zurich, Switerland, and grew up in the Catalan town of Olot, in Spain. She has studied and worked in different countries around the world. Her skin has no tattoos, but her fascination with this form of art and personal identity became the basis for “Seeing Double”.

For info:

The exhibition will be displayed at the LAB (Spain Arts and Science LAB in Belgium) of the Embassy of Spain in Belgium and will be open from 19/02 to 25/03. Visitors are welcome from Monday to Thursday between 9:00 and 17:00 and on Fridays from 9:00 to 14:30, by previous appointment only: emb.bruselas.ofc@maec.es.