【Taipei · Dunhua】《Josep Riera i Aragó : The Voyage of Life》— Half-Century Journey into the Unknown 2026.5.23 – 7.19

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Josep Riera i Aragó: The Voyage of Life — Half-Century Journey into the Unknown

Taipei．Dunhua
2026.5.23 – 7.19

Bluerider ART

Curatorial Statement

Josep Riera i Aragó (b. 1954, Spain), a graduate of the Sant Jordi Royal Academy of Fine Arts and currently based in Barcelona, is among Spain’s most internationally acclaimed contemporary artists. His work explores voyages between sky and sea, employing mechanical elements such as propellers, submarines, and airplanes to construct a poetic narrative of time, space, and life. His solo exhibitions include the Städtisches Museum Heilbronn (Germany), the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles (France), and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Permanent collections including the Fondation Vincent van Gogh, the Fundació Joan Miró, and the Boeing Company headquarters in Chicago.

The exhibition title, Josep Riera i Aragó: The Voyage of Life — Half-Century Journey into the Unknown, speaks to the essence of Aragó’s practice. For the artist, the machines that populate his work — airplanes, propellers, submarines, and ships — signify voyage itself, transcending their functional mechanical purpose to become meditations on the passage of time, the journey of life, and the pursuit of dreams. These symbols traverse imagined landscapes of time and space, composing an endless poetic voyage.

Aragó’s artistic evolution has unfolded across decades. In his early works of the 1970s, he focused on documenting daily life through visual symbols, capturing the experience of 365 days — a period that laid the foundation for his personal artistic vocabulary. In the 1980s, he began exploring themes of machinery and the deep sea, experimenting with lead, zinc, and other metals to create reliefs and sculptures. During this period, he incorporated mechanical parts, beach debris, and wood into his bronze sculptures. His landmark works of the 1990s include Gran avió d’hèlix vermella (commissioned by Barcelona City Hall), Red Propeller Airplane, and Submarine on the Wall (created for the Städtisches Museum Heilbronn), as well as Airplane 1.05PM (created for the Fondation Vincent van Gogh). Entering the twenty-first century, Aragó has continued to develop his artistic lexicon, creating sculptures and paintings that articulate a mechanical aesthetic while emphasizing themes of balance and movement. The Spanish contemporary art critic Alfonso de la Torre has praised his work thus: “Poetic, like a dialogue of metaphor and delicate language, Aragó captures the fleeting flicker of light, allowing finite things to traverse the realm of imagination.”

Across half a century of artistic inquiry, Aragó has “collaged” hard media such as bronze and steel with wood and fabric. This reassembly of disparate materials is not merely a formal visual experiment, but a means of summoning the collective memory and warmth embedded within the materials themselves. For Aragó, the ultimate core of this fifty-year voyage lies in human emotion. Those seemingly cold mechanical components, through his collaging hand, are transformed into living entities that seem to breathe — conveying humanity’s longing, solitude, and courage in the face of the unknown. Every weld seam, every patch of rust, bears witness to the gradual infusion of personal and generational emotion into matter, rendering his works bridges between bodily sensation and the depths of the soul.

This solo exhibition, Josep Riera i Aragó: The Voyage of Life — Half-Century Journey into the Unknown, presents multiple series and several museum-caliber masterworks. The “Flight Series” features Haiku, a six-meter horizontal scroll unfolding with the lightness and flow of verse. Simplified propeller motifs are scattered throughout, distilling a serene rhythm of time, space, and life within the interplay of negative space and cadence. The “Australia” manuscript series draws upon family chronicle documents dating from 1735 to 1871; upon these historical pages, the artist intervenes with painted symbols, weaving imagery of flight and movement into the traces of writing and reconstructing the trajectories of memory and imagination through layered strata of time. The “Lead Series” unfolds in deep blue tones, evoking the vast expanse of the deep sea, where submarine-like forms slowly emerge, advancing silently and unceasingly. Underwater Journey employs a circular composition that functions as an observational porthole, drawing the viewer’s gaze into the darkened depths to experience the sedimentation of time and the poetics of solitude. The “Sculpture Series” employs brass and iron to construct spare, distilled forms of flying vessels — propellers and fuselages transformed into a symbolic vocabulary that, through its poised equilibrium, reveals the poetry of motion, time, and existence.

Josep Riera i Aragó’s half-century artistic journey is a voyage filled with challenge, discovery, and reflection. Ultimately, this voyage transcends discussions of technique and medium, returning to the essential exploration of life itself. This exhibition invites viewers to come aboard, to sense — beneath the surface of mechanical aesthetics — the unwavering warmth of feeling that has persisted across five decades. When we contemplate these forms voyaging between sky and sea, we no longer see mere machines, but the eternal cadence of the human soul setting forth toward the unknown in search of belonging.

Josep Riera i Aragó: The Voyage of Life — Half-Century Journey into the Unknown
Press Conference
2026.5.22 Fri. | 14:30 – 17:00
Opening Reception
2026.5.23 Sat. | 14:30 – 18:00
Exhibition Dates
2026.5.23 – 7.19
Bluerider ART Taipei · Dunhua
1F, No. 77, Section 2, Dunhua South Rd., Da'an District, Taipei City
Opening Hours : Tue.-Sun.｜10:00 – 18:30
Email:info@blueriderart.com
Tel: 02-27522238
Group Guided Tour Reservation:vivianchiu@blueriderart.com