Art at Hotel Puerta Serranos: FORNER’s work, paint player

The artist develops for this enclave a conceptual work that recalls the drying of the fabrics and leathers of the tanneries in the area which, for centuries, was the centre of the tanning and dyeing of skins in the city of Valencia.

In these strips of paint, where FORNER ‘Jugador de pintura’ investigates to the maximum the qualities of paint as a material in itself, paint and pigment are not only the vehicle, but also the end in itself of the work.

Artwork of Forner, ‘Jugador de pintura’ en Hotel Puerta Serranos

Historical location

For centuries this district was the centre of the tanning and dyeing of leather in the city of Valencia. These Muslim and later Christian tanneries attached their rafts to the old Muslim wall and used the water of the river Turia for their work.

The “Blanquers” guild is the one that gives its name to the street where Puerta Serranos Hotel is located, as this was the Valencian name for the tanners’ guild in the city of Valencia.

This street is located where the old “Roteros” district was. It owes its name to the Latin word “rothorium”, which was the name given to the water basins where the fabrics were dyed in Vulgar Latin, referring to the fact of turning the fabrics in the vats to dye them.

At the beginning of the 20th century, this activity was still carried out in the area.

FORNER’s work, paint player

The artistic intervention carried out by FORNER ‘Jugador de pintura’ in the Puerta Serranos Hotel located in Blanquerias street combines the past and the historicity of the location of the building in the central district of El Carmen in Valencia with the modernity of the experimentation in his technique.

FORNER has developed a conceptual work for this site that recalls the drying of the fabrics and leathers of the tanneries in the area. He uses elastomeric paint modified in its composition as a result of years of experimentation with this raw material and collaboration with paint manufacturers and chemists in a continuous process of exploration of paint and pigment, both as a technique and as the material object of the work. Elastomers are not as liquid as common plastic paint, which allows him to play with the malleability of the material, creating quasi-sculptural forms and volumetries and abandoning the single point of view of the pictorial tradition.

Twelve strips of paint are suspended from metal anchors in the corners of the hotel’s courtyard in groups of three each. These strips have been executed in a saturated colour palette reminiscent of the bright colours of Muslim tanneries. In these strips of paint we see how FORNER investigates to the maximum the qualities of paint as a material in itself, colour being just another instrument of his research. The oscillation due to the weight and the air currents would recall what was the landscape of the area for centuries, the street of the “blanquers”, the tanners who dyed and treated the leather in this historic area of Valencia.

The main material of these pieces is the paint, the pigment, itself and the material and physical qualities of the paint. Although it contains fibreglass (so that the material retains its shape over time) it does not work as a traditional support for the paint but more as a sculptural framework. The paint acts as both medium and support. Despite the flatness of this work, FORNER´s work with pigment and texture gives it a sculptural value that ends up separating the pigment from the support. The mastery in the use of the material allows FORNER ‘Jugador de pintura’ a wide range of possibilities: he captures the movement and the gesture, reflecting the intensity, the angle, and the density of the application of the pigment in a dynamic way, playing with the materiality offered by the paint.

This work therefore has an intrinsic relationship with the rest of FORNER’s pictorial work, in which he wants to control the material and experiment by emphasising the dynamism of the material: the paint and the pigment are not only the vehicle but also the aim in itself of the work.