Mural cats

Design: Arnal Ballester, in collaboration with Xavier Mas and Illo Tatxé
Materials: painting

St. George's Day 1998, the painter and illustrator Arnal Ballester, perched on a crane arm extended, all decorated with a cat that had been dividing the street into Xuclà, next to the Pintor Fortuny. Mediatrix was a result of the demolition of several houses that had stopped to look at the remains of stairs and walls, torn wallpaper glue and paints faded.

Arnal Ballester The action was carried out in the framework of the first edition of "The City of Words", an initiative promoted by Macarena González de Vega. This initiative had the initial support of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), consisted of St. George declared as International Day of words and some day fill the balconies, facades and dividing the Raval district posters painted by artists volunteers collect artistic neighbors. It was given for one day, a new light on the streets of El Raval, adding banners to protest with other visual poems that included words or drawings. In 2000 the experience was repeated, this time promoted by the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona (CCCB).

Those who had taken the weight of the organization constituted first City Cultural Association of words and then Almazen company, whose CEO Macarena González de Vega as artistic director and clown Jango Edwards . In its first ten years, Almazen has become a powerful platform for professional experimentation, research, creation and dissemination of contemporary art, closely linked with the social environment. It is based on Wilfred Street, 9, in an old building that had been the source farm, factory and then finally the Victoria store shoes. That was what was used to name the company.

Cats painted on the street dividing Xuclà for its inaccessibility, were permanently and was later incorporated into the medians that promotes or protects the Urban Landscape Institute with a proposal by the architect Joan Casadevall, Director Color Cabinet, which preserves the memory of ancient geometric and chromatic rooms and drawings that had been superimposed 1999. Arnal Ballester restored some whiskers and tails are cropped and added a plinth made of planks of pressed chip that works like a blackboard, with the aim of easily erased graffiti that may appear.

In fact, Arnal Ballester just painted black cat above all, and then, with the help of a template, Xavier Mas and Illo Tatxé wall filled with others. Ballester explained that climb the crane that day of Saint George in 1998 was not yet clear who painted it and decided to see that the roofs were full of cats watching their unusual appearance on the stage. Moreover, he confessed lover of these pets, because it claimed to have four at home.

The place where the heart of the resort, the Mediatrix has become an icon and even there has been clever to be marketed cats painted on the wall. The square that was in the house was demolished which resulted in dividing received no official name because everyone immediately became known as the "Space Cats."