Unlike other trends and currents, Art Informel, which began at the end of World War II, outlived the historical and social conditions, which had caused its appearance, developing
into what is now referred to, as neo-Art Informel.  

The feature that the two movements (Art Informel proper and neo-Art Informel) have in common is a chaotic and non-iconic representation, which, in almost all cases, occupies
the entire surface of the painting.  

Numerous painters practise neo-Art Informel, particularly the youngest.

Among them is Jordi Forniés, who clearly seems to have already gained a deep 
understanding of Art Informel proper, as well as of the reasoning behind it and 
the language of neo-Art Informel. 

Jordi’s choice of neo-Art Informel bears witness to his strong cultural awareness. Jordi Forniés comes from the same land as great masters of the last century, such as Antoni Tapies. It could surely not be a casualty – open to Tapies teaching itself - how he has progressively understood that the expressive forms of this movement, while no longer corresponding to a general and existential social state, can be adopted as a result of a personal choice, which is reflected in the use of its characteristic colours, materials and the particular ways used to “properly put and adjust them on a canvas”.

Assuming the expressive, pictorial strength typical to this movement, his paintings are characterised by apparent, rough surfaces full of passion, yet constantly enriched by a 
cryptic language, which finally becomes clear. Colours are scattered in stains, mixed or superimposed onto one another, sometimes arranged in geometric patterns, bands, vibrant squares or circles successfully inserted into them. But colours are also reminiscence. 
Colours are life, bonds and interweaving. Through colours everything is recomposed and decomposed to be composed again. It is an endless play of links, connections, events 
and stories. Through them traps become dark cages, tortured rags love letters, the 
emptiness and the void to float freely.

Jordi Forniés depicts memories as if they were troubled at the sight of the world, and tries
to reconstruct them as if they were Man’s lost inner self.

Therefore, when looking at his production, the sensation of being in front of a burning soul arouses. The feeling is that each work is the starting point for the next, so it is never finished, but ready to be transformed into something else. From unity to fragmentation, from the general to the particular and then backwards, from the fragments to what one can define as the “lost” unity. For these reasons, one affirms that Jordi’s vision is protected and told by the energy of his hands, which also convey his intense discomfort and his subtle psychological
and moral pain.

Something mysterious gushes from his inner self, in a quest for emotions and dreams, which a real artist feels as “the sense of loss” for “that something” which seems to have abandoned our world today, neglected and forgotten by mankind. For this, some of his titles are expressive of similar states of mind. They tell us of such attitudes as attention, love, enthusiasm for details, but also the curiosity for existence as a whole, and for complexity. Jordi’s constant is an equal care for what is living and what is dead, as if the death of life were the life of death.

Any form could imply a constraint; a closed painting always produces a limit to the imagination, to the opportunity of deciphering anything. Any construction can be reduced to fragments, but these fragments produce different meanings, hence an ever-changing unity, connected by primary symbols, metaphors of unions and primordial geometrical bonds, that redefine the heart of the individual and the heart of existence, a conclusion of what is and an assumption of what is not.

The sense of apparent entropy conveyed by Jordi’s paintings is counterbalanced by his approach to the canvas. By chance the painter suddenly arrives to control the entire surface, to transform it into a ritual aggregate, clearly anthropological. Inside it, there’s no reference to any aesthetic or speculative judgment. Therefore, it spares the viewer from further disillusions. In a sentence, for Jordi Forniés to paint means to express the struggle to become conscious of an absolutely ethical question.

In the end, it’s my belief that Jordi’s approach to neo-Art Informel is characterized by something original, rare, something completely new. Something that belongs only to him, probably due to his Spanish-Catalan origin.  His way of painting is not only conceptual, most
of the production of this movement is. Jordi’s soul carries inside itself sorrow and light, grief and sun, nostalgia and beauty, fears, worries, strength: a full range of human feelings which, in different measure, are all part of all of us and, that through these paintings are revealed.

Sometimes the soul screams at them, sometimes the soul softens towards them.
Does a thought exist which is exclusive only to emotions? The courage to give the right 
answer is in the hands of the artist alone. In Jordi’s hands, in his brushes, in his choice of using colours wildly.

 That’s why – but not so often- a painter could be also called a modern poet.

Andrea Pagnes 
Art Critic
Venice 2008