The material and contemplative universe of Alicia Gimeno

Her pictorial work inhabits a territory where matter and gesture meet in a silent dialogue. Alicia Gimeno draws on a visual language nourished by organic forms infused with nature, rooted in the architectural memory of Catalan modernism, and shaped by a keen awareness of the spirituality of Japanese calligraphy. On her canvases, color recedes to give way to the energy of the line, to the unhurried rhythm of repetition, and to the resonance of empty space..

Each stroke is an instant of held breath, a mark that does not merely represent nature, but enters into it. The artist explores concepts such as ma (the charged space between things) and wabi-sabi (the serene dignity of imperfection), not as fixed symbols but as living ideas. Her “abstract calligraphy” arises from botanical intuition and from a will to invite slowness, intimacy, and contemplation, creating pictorial spaces that are at once matter and silence.

Fairmont Tokyo: gesture on an architectural scale

Alicia Gimeno’s relationship with Japanese aesthetics reached a culminating point with her participation in the Fairmont Tokyo project, curated by Interculture Art. In this intervention, her gesture unfolded on a grand scale, transcending the canvas to integrate into architectural and decorative elements of the hotel.

Among the most notable works are large plaster panels, four meters in height, inspired by traditional Japanese interior doors. These surfaces, free from the constraints of the stretcher, allowed the artist to develop broad, organic gestures capable of enveloping the viewer in an almost immersive experience. The project also included unique pieces, such as a ten-meter kitchen hood in engraved bronze, and glass dividers in common areas, whose interplay with light creates a delicate game of opacity.

For the artist, traversing these elements is comparable to walking through a forest: a space where calm becomes intense and connection with the essential comes alive. It was also an opportunity to work alongside artisans and professionals from diverse crafts, opening a fertile dialogue between art and craftsmanship.

Calligraphy and the written word: a future project

Alicia Gimeno’s interest in calligraphy is not limited to its visual translation: it also extends to the written word as a creative territory. In her studies with Dr. Hsiao Lin Liu, a Fine Arts scholar and expert in cursive calligraphy, she discovered the depth of a gesture that transcends the mechanical and approaches the spiritual—an inspiration both for informalist painters and for her own practice.

From these encounters emerged the idea of an aesthetic and essayistic book that gathers conversations, reflections, and visual material, establishing a bridge between what the artist seeks to learn and what her teacher wishes to transmit. Although the project does not yet have a publication date, for Gimeno it represents a more intimate and introspective exploration, where word and image converge to continue questioning the mystery of the trace.

Alicia Gimeno

Alicia Gimeno was born into a family of engineers, where the technical understanding of space was a given. However, since childhood, she cultivated a fascination with abstraction, resignifying rigidity as a canvas for creative play and emotional freedom.

Trained in graphic design during her stay in Mexico, Gimeno absorbed the expressiveness of Eastern calligraphy and the profound language of the hand-drawn line, understanding the act of writing beyond language—as a form of pure and spiritual expression.

Since 2021, her work has evolved towards a visual poetry that summons both the vegetal and the abstract: lines that emerge like roots, like intimate pathways linking form and origin, gesture and existence.

Visual language and creative philosophy
In her artistic practice, Gimeno begins with an aesthetic utopia: to strip forms of everything they are not in essence, so they may speak for themselves. White and black become her chromatic vocabulary, polarities that offer clarity to that intimate dialogue with line and space.

Her canvases are also material surfaces—textiles, fabrics, contexts—where the visual gesture flourishes, where space and matter intertwine in an organic dance.
Alicia Gimeno inhabits the space where the elegance of abstraction and the wisdom of origins coexist. Each line, each form, emerges from a root and strips itself of words to exist as gesture. In her work, black on white is not contrast: it is whisper, root, a trace that emerges from silence.

It is an art that recognizes that every form is inscribed in a context—in matter, in memory, in air—and, at the same time, that only when we speak from essence can we truly hear what forms wish to say.

Sources: Alicia Gimeno y Fairmont Tokio.

Project by Alicia Gimeno