SOBREMESA, a solo exhibition at Palazzo Monti, Brescia (Italy) From July to September 2022

No one shall stand up from the table, except for urgent needs. It is obligatory to pause after the last pieces of dessert, crumpled napkins, empty glasses and stray cutlery. Let's enjoy the magic spell of conviviality. In sum, the Sobremesa.

Spanish term, like Spanish is Ignasi Monreal (Barcelona, 1990) who celebrates it, and indicates the 'dolce far niente’, a pleasant idleness at the dining table, after having eaten a meal. A term impossible to translate, but what is the use of translating an art appreciated and practiced by all of us Mediterraneans? Long live postprandial relax.

We find ourselves in front of a laden table, fresh from an evening whose traces are visible in the wine glasses more empty than full, an overflowing ashtray and everything that populates the cheerful battlefield that we call 'summer dinner with friends in Italy' . Everything, except the plates and trays, replaced overnight by hyper-realistic reproductions, oil on oval and round-shaped canvases, 1 to 1 scale with the original delicacies. We find them set up on the walls, together with other painted dining tables, that immortalize what remains of intimate banquets.

A celebration of life, of well-deserved rest, of this ritual that we carry out three times a day, throughout our life, sometimes in a hurry, sometimes calmly, with friends or alone, standing or lying on the grass.

Monreal was born in Barcelona, but like so many artists today, he has lived everywhere. He passed through Lisbon and London, traveled the world, spent a few months even in Rome. And it is in Italy where he began to paint on canvas, after years of work as an illustrator and digital artist. In a historical moment where the greater a revolution is, the faster it implodes on itself (see crypto and NFTs), Monreal challenges the market and throws himself towards analogue, merging the centuries-old practice of painting with his pictorial style created through the years, drawing on iPad. The project, born in 2018 on Instagram and which has taken on a more powerful meaning during the pandemic, manifests itself in the offline world. The sharing of photos of dirty dishes on the app that seems to celebrate only the beautiful and perfect, is highly ironic.

The trompe-l'œil effect conceals an autobiographical detail. The act of having lunch with friends became the main axis of his life in Rome, the hub of his community of friends and creatives. In a city so rich in art, it was essential to have developed memories closely linked to taste and smell. These painted plates perfectly follow the tradition of trompe-l'œil, especially those found in Rome: they make the superficial deep, the ephemeral eternal.

After years of collaborating with companies and brands in every corner of the globe, Ignasi takes a reflective break, and we stop with him to understand that it is not only important what we eat, but how.

Sobremesa
2022

Paintings by Ignasi Monreal
Curated by Edoardo Monti
Text by Edoardo Monti