All UTOPIAS invite us to take Flight. Happy Saint Jordi’s Day!

Josep Ponsatí (Banyoles, Girona, 1947) lives and works in Porqueres, Girona. He studied in Barcelona, with sojourns in Paris and New York, and participated in actions and group events in Catalonia’s conceptualist scene in the late sixties. His early kinetic sculptures in a minimalist, constructivist style soon veered towards the world of inflatable objects: ephemeral sculptures that tied into the landscape and put him on the map of the conceptual art world. He built his first inflatable work in 1971, and from then on his artistic expression focused on the creation of large-scale inflatable sculptures. As a result of his participation in the Paris Biennial in 1973, his inflatable sculptures received international acclaim. Although these pneumatic structures were playful and participatory, they were always preceded by a long technical process and many calculations. From the eighties onwards, Ponsatí has developed much more complex aerial, ephemeral sculptural objects.

Footage of his inflatable sculptures has been screened at the Biennale de Paris (1973), the Joan Miró Foundation (1977), Centre d’Art Santa Mònica de Barcelona (1989 and 1992), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2005), the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Korea (2010), MACBA (2011), Moderna galerija in Ljubljana (2011-2012) and CaixaForum Madrid (2011-2012). In 1986, the Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat in organised a Josep Ponsatí retrospective. His work is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MACBA.