Bruno Ollé: the creative process of a multidisciplinary artist

Painting, video, text, sculpture, installations, found objects, Bruno Ollé can’t conceive of art without trying new things, and we liked his latest show so much that we wanted to know more.

By Gala Mora
31 March 2022

Bruno Ollé at his studio

«Exploring individual memory through archives, found objects, diaries, drawings and videos, artist Bruno Ollé works with painting, video, text, sculpture and installation. He is interested in investigating the transfer of objects and collects experiences from his surroundings. His processes are open in time and have neither a beginning nor an end». So began the description of the latest exhibition of the multidisciplinary Catalan artist Bruno Ollé, Under the Skin, which was at Alzueta Gallery in Barcelona until 20 January. That sensation of being traversing the memory of an artist in the form of pieces created ad hoc, made us wonder how a project of these characteristics is approached.

Under de Skin: Bruno Ollé Solo Exhibition at Alzueta Gallery

Graduated in Art and Design (EINA, Barcelona University Centre of Art and Design), his artistic practice explores individual memory through archives, found objects, diaries, drawings and video recordings. Working with painting, video, text, sculpture or installation, Ollé is interested in investigating the delocalisation of objects and collects experiences of his surroundings. His processes are open-ended and do not have a beginning and an end. «The best thing about my work is that I run little risk of getting bored,» he says, «jumping from one place to another allows me to discover. Of course, if the chosen path doesn’t work out, it can wear me out. But when you’re working from scratch, chances are that it won’t work out the way you think it will.

He assures that he does not distinguish between one form of expression or another, and that the basis of everything is space. «I have never taken painting as an action distinct from sculpture or installation. Looking, painting, building, composing are all part of the same thing. I’m much more attracted by the idea of trying and experimenting than by the obsession to master a technique to perfection. In this process I leave an infinite number of things half-finished. And when I propose a work, it is almost always linked to the physical space as a starting point. The physics of the object and the space. When I begin, I intuit the work on the basis of a specific space. This means that sometimes it is resolved in the form of a painting, sometimes as an installation, video or a combination of everything.

Under de Skin: Bruno Ollé Solo Exhibition at Alzueta Gallery

In the aforementioned Under the Skin, Ollé presented a series of sculptures that invaded the exhibition space. «Everything starts from the base itself, the same material with which I play and form each work in a different way, but at the same time seeking to create a unitary sense between the different pieces». The installation is therefore a recreation of the artist’s memory repository, «an extrapolation of my being, where each sculpture stands as each of the pillars that have ended up forming my life experience». With a clear evocation of totemic constructions, Ollé arranged these totems to form a sort of sacred, intimate space that ends up becoming a monumental work, a symbol of rootedness, of belonging to a group, to a family.

Bruno Ollé at his studio

So we have to look to the past in order to look to the future? No doubt about it. «When I think of contemporaneity, I always think of it in terms of looking back. This look back is what allows us to take a small step forward. To revisit the origins and rediscover Polke, Guston, Nauman, even Velázquez or Tintoretto from our own time. The speed at which we live makes us advance so fast that it seems we always have to keep an eye on the future, when the only thing we can learn from is what has already been experienced by others or by ourselves. I like to think of those processes discarded by the very speed of our time. That, in a way, ties in with the idea of nostalgia: to find the future is to revisit the past. And that’s the way I construct most of the pieces. The objects I reuse, keep and collect have to do precisely with that nostalgia for preserving what once was or could have been.

Bruno Ollé at his Solo Show: Under the Skin