50th International Plastic Art Competition, Pollensa

As a part of the Festival of Pollenca, an event dedicated to celebrating the arts both visual, written and musical, is the opening of the 50th International Plastic Art’s exhibition in the Pollenca Museum.

The International Plastic Arts competition has run in Pollenca since 1962 and has been instrumental in building up the Pollenca Museum’s collection of modern art, a large proportion of which comes from the winners of the Plastic Arts competition throughout the years, these items are on permanent display in the museum.

An international event, this competition is open to any artist who wishes to enter regardless of age, nationality or residency, and although the vast majority of this years 141 entrants were from Spain and the Balearics, there were entrants from artists all over the world including Ecuador, Cuba, Russia, Peru, Chile, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Each year the competition is given a subject; this year its 'Landscape', which the artists are then free to interpret in any way they see fit with no restrictions on medium or style (although this is a competition for visual art). This year 10 pieces were chosen from the masses to be exhibited in the Pollenca Museum from which the three awarded pieces were chosen. The ten pieces show a variety of styles including photography, print, paint, sculpture and installation. The panel who undertook the judging of the competition included the Mayor of Pollenca as well as a museum director, art professor and renowned art critics.

The winner of this years competition and the recipient of the €5000 prize was a photographic piece entitled Infraqueable 02, En El Limite or ‘Impassable 02 in the limit’ by Almale y Bondia, a joint project created by the Spanish pair Javier Almale and Jesus Bondia. The winning piece is a single photograph from a collection of several pieces exploring the concept of doorways as limits, or separators between two things and between aspects of life. The collection shows various photographs of landscapes with doorways imposed upon but camouflaged amongst the natural terrain.

Second prize and €3000 went to Mallorcan born, Chinese influenced Artist Xim Llompart for his piece 'Medidas Universales' (Universal Measures) “Marina 15”. Llompart’s piece is a construction of rectangular wooden racks and cloth, reminiscent of on old-fashioned camera. Llompart’s work is designed to question the concept of landscape as being something that we don’t ever merely observe but that we inherently appropriate, standardise and fragment the reality we see during the observation process.

An Honourable Mention went to Damia Vives Infante for his Oscil.lograma, (Waveform), 35 hours in Transit; a digital print that translates sound to image. Arta born artist Damia took sound recordings from the same spot over several periods of five hours and has here converted those recordings onto paper using bright, childish colours of ink. The piece on display is a copy of the original and stretches along one long wall of the museum measuring 110 X 705 cm and has had to be split into sections to accommodate a doorway.

The prize-winning pieces also retain the right to remain on display in the museum’s permanent collection of modern art pieces from the plastic arts competition over the years although perhaps the size of Damia’s piece will prevent it from doing so. The rest of this year’s competition collection will remain on display until 13th September 2015.

Entry to view the collection is €1.50 which also gains you a catalogue of the competition pieces and access to the rest of the museum which includes the modern art collection, Gothic altarpieces, pottery collection and the wonderful Tibetan Mandala donated to the Museum by the Dalai Lama. The Pollenca Museum is open to visitors from Tuesday to Saturday 10.00-13.00 and 17.30 – 20.30, closed Sundays, Mondays and Public holidays.