Matter, fire and silence: the essential art of Yoyo Balagué

The Catalan artist Yoyo Balagué transforms the visible into vestige and the everyday into ritual: through ceramics, painting and gesture, she summons the elements —fire, air, water, wood— so that they may inhabit the work as a living trace. Her art seeks not only to be contemplated but also inhabited: a dialogue between the body that works, the matter that transforms, and the landscape that inspires. Thus, Yoyo Balagué leaves behind the conventional path of creation to enter an intimate geography where the imperfect breathes, the ephemeral endures, and the essential emerges. Yoyo has shared with us this beautiful text in which she defines her journey and the meaning of her art.

I am a visual artist born in Barcelona, deeply connected to the landscape of the Empordà, where I currently live and work. My artistic journey has always been a form of inner exploration, linked to the body, to matter, and to the elements of nature..

I studied Fine Arts, and from a very early stage I developed a constant practice in painting and printmaking —languages I have kept alive in parallel throughout my career, even during the years I worked professionally in the world of textile design. That period gave me a deep understanding of color, surface, and visual rhythm, while I continued creating my personal work consistently.

I have lived in London, New York, and in different regions of Germany —experiences that broadened my perspective and enriched my artistic language. Being exposed to other visual cultures and ways of life allowed me to build a more open, free, and essential practice. Over time, I felt the need to return to a slower rhythm, to an environment where matter, body, and landscape could engage in a deeper dialogue.

In my current work, ceramics occupies a central place, together with painting and other material processes. I work with manual techniques, without the use of a wheel, seeking for each piece to retain the trace of the gesture and the process itself. Pit-firing, an ancestral firing technique using fire, smoke, and organic materials such as seaweed or driftwood that I collect myself on nearby beaches, has become a fundamental part of my practice. I am drawn to accident, chance, and the trace of time and the elements in the work. The wabi-sabi aesthetic —which values the imperfect, the unfinished, and the ephemeral— is deeply present in my universe.

Le Sentiment des choses (Paris), East West Gallery (Barcelona/Asia), Ateliers Courbet (New York), and Rath Gallery (Texas) are the galleries that represent me and with whom I share a common vision of materiality, time, and respect for the artisanal process. I have exhibited in national and international art fairs and galleries, presenting both ceramic works and paintings, always with the same intention: that each piece may breathe, have a soul, and contain a living presence.

Today, my practice is a synthesis of all that journey: the pictorial gesture, the matter transformed by fire, the memory of the body, and the constant dialogue with the natural environment. My work is built within that intermediate space between the visible and the invisible, between the energy of the elemental and the contemplation of the everyday.”

Project by Yoyo Balagué