Agnès Fornells’ practice developed as an outcome of her stays abroad, which generally revolved around urban and street life, particularly in Spain and Latin America. Therefore, her work is linked to the Spanish language and to the foreigner’s relationship with its spoken and written (or sung) use. Fornells uses mainly photography and video, in which words are sometimes heavily featured. Her work focuses mainly on the public space, its uses and the way it is occupied according to various cultural modes of expression. The images she creates are not staged and are set in social spaces or in the street. Once it is captured on the spot, this material is then reprocessed by changing its framing or editing, by placing it in a different context or by reinterpreting it in a different visual field. The artist expanded her practice to three-dimensional works and ceramics on the occasion of an Artelinea residency in 2018. She is currently experimenting with three-dimensional pieces based on a “reconstitution” process of the situations and objects she photographed.
Agnès Fornells

Translated by Lucy Pons
Biographical notes translated with the support of the Centre national des arts plastiques

Matériaux & Techniques

béton, céramique, cyanotypie, débris, déchets, écriture, estampage, installation, imprimerie, moulage, objets usuels, papiers colorés et/ou imprimés, papier journal, papier peint, peinture en lettre, photographie, plâtre, poussière, projection, riso, rvb, terre, tissus et trames, tirages numériques, vitres, vidéo

Outils

appareil photo, bureau, écran, four à hautes températures, logiciels de retouche et de montage, mots, ordinateur, photochimie, projecteurs, tampons, traceur, ustensiles de cuisine, ustensiles ménagers

Gestes

archiver, associer, cadrer, collecter, composer, couper et monter, dé-situer, déplacer, dériver, enregistrer, filmer, fixer, inventorier, isoler, marcher, noter, photographier, projeter, poser, reconstituer, récupérer, retourner, répertorier, séjourner, sélectionner, sérier, synthétiser, traduire

Mots clé

abandonné, attente, Amérique latine, apparition, appropriation, atelier, balade, Barcelona, cante (chant, en parlant du flamenco), chantier, cimetière, codes, contexte, coutume, Decazeville, échelle humaine, écrit, effet de montage, en cours, erratique, erroné, espace public, Espagne, étranger, fête, folklore, fond, foule, fugace, graffiti, hispanophone, lettrage, idiomatisme, illusion, interprétation, image, Jerez de la Frontera, littéralité, marche, Madrid, Mexico, milonga, motif, négatif, objet, oralité, parole, piège visuel, piétonne, plan fixe, poème, poésie non intentionnelle, ponctuation, populaire, précarité, premier plan, prise de vue, protocole, quotidien, Rio de Janeiro, radio, reconstitution, reflet, relation, rue, saeta, salissure, saynète, séjour, scène, signe, situation, société, sol, spontané, territoire, trace, traduction, urbain, usage, vignette, ville

Citations

“L’espace public est la scène de situations hautement ritualisées, mais imprévisibles, de protocoles spontanés”. Manuel Delgado dans El animal público