Sergi Barnils – La memòria de la pedra
Pietrasanta, 25 July – 20 August 2026 |
Sergi Barnils
La memòria de la pedra
25 July – 20 August 2026
Pietrasanta
Piazza Giordano Bruno, 3
55045 Pietrasanta, LU
Opening Hours:
Monday – Sunday 11am–1pm / 6pm–12pm
MARCOROSSI artecontemporanea is pleased to present La memòria de la pedra, the new body of work by Sergi Barnils.
The exhibition will premiere at the Pietrasanta gallery on July 25th, before traveling in September to the Milan, Verona, and Turin locations.
On display are sculpted stones worked using the encausto technique, the ancient Greek and Roman tradition of painting with hot wax and fire, and engraved with the Catalan artist’s unmistakable mark. Each gallery will also host a large-scale canvas by Barnils, offering a broader insight into his pictorial universe and creating a dialogue between the sculptural dimension of the stones and the flatness of painting.
Matter as Memory
The exhibition’s title evokes the profound relationship Barnils shares with his medium: stone is not merely a support, but the keeper of stratified memory and accumulated time.
As seen in his previous series, Pedra Cèlica, this new body of work adapts the encausto technique to the porous surfaces of marble, granite, slate, and other stones. The wax coats and seals the material, imbuing it with an inner luminosity that no other medium can replicate. Alongside jagged, irregular shapes reminiscent of ancient artifacts, this series introduces geometric silhouettes, such as circles, ovals, rectangles, and diamonds, creating a fresh tension between formal rigor and the unpredictability of the raw material.
An Alphabet Carved in Stone
The graffiti scoring the surfaces, primordial markings, visionary alphabets, and traces of a language-less script, belong to a visual vocabulary that Barnils has developed and refined over four decades. In La memòria de la pedra, these marks take on a newfound tension. Incised into the stone, they seem to emerge from geological depths, as if the artist’s hand had merely unearthed what was already dormant within the material.
The project thus unfolds as a reflection on permanence and fragility. Stone, among the most durable materials known to humanity, becomes the canvas for Barnils’ intimate reflections on the human condition, time, and the celebration of life in all its forms.
Sergi Barnils
Born in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, in 1954, Sergi Barnils has dedicated himself fully to painting since the 1990s. Over time, his artistic language has reached full maturity, evolving toward a synthesis of space where a sharp, refined mark dialogues with a palette deeply rooted in Mediterranean tradition. Over the years, Barnils has perfected the encausto technique (the ancient Greek and Roman method of wax and fire painting) condensing into his imagery his reflections on the human condition and his personal celebration of life. In recent years, the artist has turned his attention to stone sculpture, expanding his visual alphabet into the three-dimensional realm.
For any infromation
