Talking about Paula Bonet and her work is talking about drawing, engraving, painting and writing. In each and every one of these disciplines the reflection of her own personality was fully introduced like a cyclone. She can afford it: she doesn't lack training nor –and this is her main quality- desire to keep learning and exploring new disciplines. The intensity she displays overflows and makes itself visible in her work.

She gave her first steps in painting, and from there moved towards drawing which led her to writing. The illustrated books were the gateway to a world in which she was able to combine her two artistic aspirations: painting and writing. Image and word have gone hand in hand for years in her work, years of vast production in which one can't deny the talent of a constant and concise work which consequently turned her into an early mentor of a determined aesthetic universe in an impactful way.

With the release of La sed (Lunwerg, 2016), style and theme became tougher and more emotional. Paula Bonet kept figuration, but discarded iconography and colour became pale and sombre, in turn resurrecting swipe and glazing in her paintings. At that moment, the author starts a creative incontinence process marked by a personal grow which reflects itself in professionalism and one involving a fierce graphic experimentation. That's how she turns her thought into a work of a progressively less figurative and more materico plastic talent, made from personal experiences and a series of reflections on the meaning of being a woman. From that moment, Bonet focuses her work around a tool she knows very well: painting.

Evolving implies a change of phase, the search for a new aspect or form in question and it involves going down new paths. And that's what we find in La anguila exhibition. This is a painting, not an opinion (L'anguila. Açò és un quadre, no una opinió): the natural evolutionary development of painter Paula Bonet.

It's an exhibition based on original and unique work. Large-format paintings and polyptychs distributed in three parts, "The inheritance" (La herencia), "The flesh" (La carne) and "The painting" (La pintura), which create a whole, but could very well be as many other independent exhibitions where, at first glance, we already see a clear plastic development in their shapes, colours and textures.

Each of those sections tells a specific story and moment, but all three coexist in an inevitable connection, especially the first two, where facts impose their weight. Both take us to personal experiences through images of a very dark, almost abstract expressionism, in canvases that range from large formats to compositions based on small works and turn this intimate tale not into a literal interpretation analysis, but into a reflection on reality. A tale that will continue and, like an eel, will spawn in the end.

L'anguila. Açò és un quadre, no una opinió  isn't a confession. It's a number of works of high formal intensity, endowed with poetic quality and social compromise.

Cristina Chumillas

Soy una anguila.

Me contorsiono y conozco las partes que me forman.

Y no dejo que me atrapen.

La palabra y la pintura son herramientas de reivindicación. El yo libre y autónomo se sucede en la página y en el lienzo en blanco antes que en nuestra intimidad o en nuestra vida pública.

Desde que leí a María Luisa Bombal imagino que mis abuelas y mis tías lo entendieron todo un poco después de muertas, cuando descansaban en la superficie blanca del interior de la caja de madera y el resto las velábamos. Las imagino mirando las caras de las personas que nos acercamos mientras reconstruyen su vida. Pienso que es entonces cuando comprenden cómo de cruel ha sido el mundo con ellas. Fueron las hijas de Juan, las mujeres de Alfonso, las madres de Agustín. Pero muertas se saben Carmen Mompó, Pura Mompó, Juanita Sorita. La anguila es una carta de amor a todas ellas y una lanza a favor de las que vienen detrás. Es pintura y es palabra que observa y denuncia las agresiones que sufrimos, un relato caliente y palpitante que se escurre cuando quieres amarrarlo, igual que cuando una intenta señalar la injusticia que el contexto patriarcal aplaude. La anguila habla de lo que se estuvo a punto de ser pero no existió porque lo nuestro tiene que ver con la alteridad, con el accesorio, con lo que el cánon rechaza.

En "La anguila" pinto aquello que no puedo nombrar con palabras.

Paula Bonet