Joaquim Vicens Gironella: le liège & la mémoire (cork and memory)

In my desire to do a film on my uncle—at the core of that desire, at its very source—a "blind spot" existed. Where, I wondered, did my feeling of an invisible and mute presence come from? Gironella carried these forests, this village, within him. He spoke to us about another time, another language. In Gironella's oeuvre, cork is what comes closest to memory ...  so paradoxical, so malleable, so tender, but lasting. We ourselves had to still feel the artist's secretly intimate relationship with his material—"that organic, plant-flesh to which he applies his hand," as Dubuffet put it.