Paul Loubet working on the mural. Photo by Tato Baeza
Berklee College of Music’s campus in Valencia, Spain, along with the faculty of fine arts at the University Polytechnic of Valencia, recently hosted a contest to turn one of the walls in its library into a large-scale art project through a mural installation as part of the 2017 commemoration of the campus’s fifth anniversary.
The call for artists, which started in March this year, was open for a month to artists who were interested in designing and developing an original project that referenced the mission and values of Berklee’s campus in Valencia, its location in the city, and the function of a library space that works as a multipurpose area as well as the place where diversity, learning, investigation, and innovation occur. A five-person committee from Berklee and the University Polytechnic of Valencia was appointed in order to evaluate the projects and select the winner. In total, they received 28 projects with different styles and techniques, presented by 19 mural painting artists, illustrators, and fine arts students from Spain, France, Argentina, and Japan.
Watch the outcome of the wall painting:
French artist Paul Loubet was selected as the contest winner with his mural titled Jazz. After graduating from Institut Saint-Luc Tournai in Belgium, Loubet lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for five years, where he developed his skills as an illustrator and a mural artist. He has exhibited his paintings in a plethora of art festivals and galleries such as arteBA in Argentina, Logo Gallery in Brazil, Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Galerie P38 in France, Slowboy Gallery in Germany, and Art Moment in Hungary, among others. His illustrations have been published in magazines and books like Die Zeit in Germany, Biscoto and Clark Magazine in France, and Illustration Next in the U.S. In Loubet’s words, “My research and results are a synthesis of naïve art, outsider art, and formal simplicity. I’ve tried to reduce my style and vocabulary to obtain an increasingly simple result using few elements. My goal is to create a mix between abstract painting and naïve painting. I’ve always been fascinated by saying a lot in a little. Therefore, I try to do the same with my art.”
Loubet met all the requirements to participate in the contest, submitting an original project designed specifically for the campus that combined musical and abstract elements that both inspire you and stimulate your imagination. “The selection process was really challenging, given the quality and variety of the projects we received, but Paul’s captured our essence perfectly, and it manages to reflect the past, present, and future of Berklee’s campus in Valencia,” said Alejandro Cuadrado. A librarian and faculty member at Berklee’s campus in Valencia, Cuadrado is the person who created and project managed the contest. “The use of colors is really balanced and provides the space with light without being visually intrusive, thanks to the simplicity of lines and the apparently chaotic, yet really seamless distribution of the elements. Paul also respected the central space, reserved for video projections, without entirely delimiting the area, which we found to be very creative. The design feels very youthful and is very appropriate for an educational center full of artists.”
