Empordaguia

On a cold and sunny morning we visit Carlos Pazos’ studio in one of the enchanting white alleys of Cotlliure. La Sardinerie proclaims a sign on the façade, in honour of the old sardine salting works that once occupied this space. At first, the door resists and refuses to open with ease. It ins not simple to enter the world of Carlos Pazos, but once you hold the handle with skill and tenderness, you enter an artistic labyrinth that will never again leave you indifferent. It is full of objects and things piled up, filed away, or just left lying around, the result of the artist’s obsessive desire to collect objects and words and to give them a new life and new meanings. Games, luck, and irony are indispensable tools in the artistic world of Carlos Pazos.
A creative cocktail
On his web site he explains that he is neither a vocational nor a talented artist, he is an artist by will and resolve who creates for his social and emotional survival. It is really difficult to imagine him in a world other than that of art. When he was young, he considered entering art school, but it was too academic for his liking. His taste for art took him to the School of Architecture, but he soon left when he realized the students were more interested in becoming architects than in architecture. His passage there was not in vain, because he now took up construction. In his peculiar case, construction does not commence with nothing, it already exists and has body and presence: he reformulates, rearranges, disturbs, shakes, and gives it a new soul. In this sense the creative engine of Carlos Pazos is a shaker. Curiously, for some time the artist managed a cocktail bar.
Objects, souvenirs...
He collects and stores piles and piles of objects that attract his curiosity; very often they are toys or kitsch objects. He likes to call them souvenirs, because he finds them in a different place and past moment and brings them to the present. It’s amusing to stroll through his studio observing the things he has brought there with the objective of salvaging them one day and using them to open new reflections. Often he uses quite innocent objects to make bitter and sharp allusions. Small girl’s shoes, sea snails, plastic soldiers, yo-yos, old wristwatches, the famous thick ballpoint pen with 24 colours, an Exin 8 Super film projector, porcelain dogs, Lego pieces, Vallcauris ceramics that seem pieces of wood, stuffed foxes… they all repose in Carlos Pazos’ studio, waiting for his imagination to put them to use.
National Arts Award
Beyond these objects yet in direct relationship with them, the compositions of this artist are completed by constant play on words. He loves to offer his spectators things to read. In this way, for example, Picasso becomes Nicasso. Although he spent most of his career on the margins of the art world due to his rebel spirit, Carlos Pazos was awarded the National Visual Arts Prize in 2007. This established his name in art circles, yet he claims that if there is a before and after on his path, it was his exhibition at the Macba and then the Reina Sofia in Madrid. It was the most visited exhibition in the history of the Macba, and this made him popular. This is valuable to him, because he defends the social aim of art; especially as a tool of entertainment in a world he believes to be terribly boring.
Exhibition at the Fundación Vila Casas

On June 11th he opens an exhibition in the Fundació Vila Casas Can Mario in Palafrugell that will be open all summer. It will include a selection of his objects as well as some short projections. Later he will do another show at the Empordà Museum in Figueres. This will be more didactic, with notebooks and large collage. Finally, he will also be at the Galeria Presenta in Girona, a return for him after being the inaugural artist there.//TINA CASADEMONT FOTOS ANDREA FERRÉS