ART CONTEMPORANI
Solo son peces by
Juanjo Surace
This mural does not depict fish; it embodies them as presences that transcend the biological. With a visual style that fuses the dreamlike with the symbolic, he transforms these aquatic beings into pulsating mirrors of the human. Each eye, wide and bulging, does not observe the world but reflects it, laying bare our most primal emotions: curiosity, fear, uprooting and belonging.
The scene, seemingly fantastic, becomes a metaphor for everyday life. The fish, with their fixed gaze and their bodies suspended in a liquid that recalls both water and time, challenge us from an otherness that is not foreign. They ask us, wordlessly: What really separates us from other forms of life? Where does the human begin and end?
By immersing ourselves in this work, we are invited to a radical act of empathy: to abandon the superiority of our anthropocentric gaze and encounter—perhaps for the first time—the other as an equal. This is not an aquarium or a marine fantasy. It is a visual call to rethink the relationship we establish with the environment, with what is alive, with what feels, even if it does not speak.
“El Blau Urbà,” part of the Diagonal Mar contemporary art project, uses the power of color and expressive distortion to break with traditional narratives of public art. Here, the fish are not decoration, but witnesses. And we, the viewers, discover ourselves in their dilated pupils: vulnerable, mutant, deeply connected.
About Juanjo Surace
Juan José Surace was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1977. He began his artistic career in 1995 as a self-taught artist and emigrated to Barcelona in 1998. Shortly after, he began working as a 3D animator and illustrator, participating in various television series, films, commercials, video games, and mappings for theater plays. In 2009, he wrote, directed, and produced the short film “La confesión de Saduj,” officially selected for 62 festivals and winner of 5 awards worldwide. Simultaneously, he exhibits his work as a sculptor and painter in galleries and art fairs in Spain, Argentina, the United States, Germany, and France. Since 2014, he has taught traditional animation, 3D modeling, and character design at the Escuela Superior de Cine de Catalunya (ESCAC) and sculpture at the Pompeu i Fabra University’s Master’s in Animation program. He also works as a tutor for animation projects in both programs. In 2017, he began focusing his work on public space interventions and muralism, an activity he continues to this day.
His murals can be seen in Spain, Argentina, Italy, the United States, and France.
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