Visual Artist Micaela Cometa Xerra

Norman Warwick introduces

Visual Artist Micaela Cometa Xerra

Editor´s note.  Part of The following article was scheduled to have been posted to Miguel at Lanzarote Information after a bug swept our office,  and I don´t mean a computer bug

We were unable to submit, to Lanzarote Information and What´s On Lanzarote, our introduction to this artist who loves the Lanzarote landscapes and its natural textures.  Some sort of infection set in and we immediately realised we would not even be able to publish what was already written. So, this interesting piece slipped through our net and we sincerely apologise to Micaela, and will look at a way to bring you much fuller details of her career highlights over the next few years

´We´ll begin by asking her to introduce herself..

It is my pleasure to write an article introducing myself to readers of Sidetracks And Detours, and tell you all about my recent exhibition in club Real Náutico Lanzarote Arrecife..

I would like to introduce myself briefly. My name is Micaela Cometa Xerra.

In 2020 I launched my new collection of paintings after a long period of painting as a hobby to escape the hustle and bustle of daily routine.

I studied advertising for 5 years at the University of Palermo. In 2005 I settled in Milan where I worked for Saatchi & Saatchi as an account manager.

After traveling for a couple of years, in 2015 I settled in Lanzarote, where I find daily inspiration for my work.

My neutral palette conveys organic and modern elements such as lava, aluminum and stone, while its minimal pictorial marks preserve the stories.

My work has produced a variety of series over the years, all with the common thread of providing evocative moments for its viewers.

My works can be found in private and corporate collections and I’m currently represented by “Los Colores de La Isla” in the Lanzarote Art Gallery and Lanzarote Airport Internacional Cesar Manriquez;

My most recent exhibitions in recent years have included eventsx st NYC art Gallery Nolita 2023, Arte Basel Miami 2022, La Biennale di Genova 2020 and Lacuna Art 2020.

My next showings   will be at Chelsea Fair NYC followed by another at   Art Basel Miami

I am confident that many of your like-minded, arts loving readers would find aspects of my work to enjoy and I would love to start an arts dialogue with them

Kindly

Mia CX.

An on-line entry about micaela and her work is posted at

La pintura natural de Micaela Cometa

giving details of her career and successes to date. This is a particularly excellent site called Plataforma de arte contemporaneo, and a features a study of her work written by Andrea Garcia Casal, entitled The Natural Painting of Micaela Cometa.

The essay hangs on a quote from a piece written by Jeanne-Claude called The Most Frequent Errors, in which it is suggested that ”Over the millennia, for 5000 years, artists have tried to introduce a variety of different qualities into their works of art. […] But there is one quality that they have never used, and it is the quality of love and tenderness that human beings have, which is why it does not last.”

After a quick overview of artists like Christo and Jeanne- Claude, suggesting they are often taken as part of the movement known as land-art, the essayist suggests that Micaela is standing at a crossroads, deciding how she wants to address the same choices as the two aforementioned artists had to make.

Since 2020 Micaela has devoted herself solely to her art. She has since found that Lanzarote affords her a time to reflect and having clear mobility limitations and is an idyllic location to encourage inspiration.

Over these three years of introspection, Cometa varied from figuration to abstraction, without ever forgetting the first – here you will see the figurative fierceness of L’infibulazione : a work against female genital mutilation. Likewise, he leaned towards a type of painting in which the material is primary over the form; he evolved from formalism to informalism. He started with the novelty of collecting materials from nature to add them to his works. The dichotomy between nature and culture does not exist here. In the same way as for Christo and Jeanne-Claude, nature is respected as much as possible by Cometa. And as an unequivocal sign of admiration, he collects its particular fruits without flinching; those who are born so repeatedly that they are impossible to miss.

Of course the volcanic rocks that all artists encounter when working in or visiting Lanzarote are spatially specified within the Timanfaya National Park. Micaela works the petrified lava in the studio (right), before using it on either canvas or board. Likewise, the artist uses, for example, the earth and sand found in the area to apply them to her works and give them an unparalleled effectiveness. Sometimes, she also works with ceramic pieces that she makes herself, which still have a relevant connection with the environment and she always adds them according to the final meaning of her work.

Another striking aspect of this point is that, whatever the material extracted from nature, the artist collects the natural object, that which does not have the purpose of solving human needs. Following the philosopher Vítor Guerreiro, natural objects differ from artifacts in the aspect that the former are “things that can occasionally satisfy needs or desires, but that were not made for that purpose” (Guerreiro, Teoría institutional del arte en Contemporary theories of art and literature, 2021).

Using materials that were not made for the purpose of satisfying us allows us to make visible the value of what is purely natural, roughly degraded in comparison with what is properly cultural. From the Earth arise the main elements in which humanity does not intervene, demonstrating, in short, that the human being is subject to the planet and its particularities. Furthermore, it should be added that art is a logically cultural dimension, but it is situated on a differentiating level, both in that it is not functional in the style of the objects that Guerreiro describes in the aforementioned chapter.

Micaela´s current collection is being show from Thursday 19^th until Sunday 22^nd October in one of Lanzarote´s most popular and prestigious rooms. We look forward to visiting the exhibition and  hopefully meeting with her. As we regularly feature The Lanzarote Art Gallery here on the island and also frequently carry news from the Adsubian Gallery in the beautiful countryside outside Alacante we look forward to adding Micaela´s updates on what happens from here.