Statues that are boats
Robert Limoso’s Miraestels float in the waters of the port looking for stars and something else
Buoys, fishing boats, merchant ships, tugboats, pilot boats, sports boats, and other vessels ply the waters of the Port of Barcelona, but the most surprising things floating on its surface are two guardians of the sky: the Miraestels. They are two white human figures with their necks stretched upwards, searching for something in the air, created by the sculptor and painter Robert Llimós, winner of the National Prize for Plastic Arts.
The Miraestels are more akin to boats than statues, because they are made of boat materials: fiberglass and polyester resin, and underneath their floating pedestal there is a two-meter keel. But what makes them seafaring is that they move with the swell of the harbor and bob with the same rhythm as the sea.
In 2009, something strange happened to Robert Llimós that changed everything in his work and also in his life. Searching for landscapes and perhaps answers to the cruelties of fate, which in 1996 took his 24-year-old son Marc from him in a traffic accident, he was walking along a lonely beach in Brazil. He himself has written about what happened:
On a trip to Fortaleza, Brazil, in 2009, I had an experience that has stayed with me forever. One afternoon, I went for a walk to get inspired by the landscape: mounds of dunes stretching to the horizon, dotted with four trees, a cloudy sky, a spectacular view. Suddenly, as I looked up at the sky, I was amazed to see a UFO, half-camouflaged by the clouds.
I began to draw what I was seeing: lights, lines, and the ship’s camouflage effect with the fog and clouds. With my eyes fixed on the paper, I realized that lights were beginning to shine on me from above, scanning me. I looked at the ship and saw an open window and, inside, two figures watching me: a man and a woman, both with very long necks and scaly skin.
When I returned to Barcelona, I began to paint quickly and intensely, as I had an exhibition coming up and wanted to introduce this new theme.
I believe that interpreting this approach has been a response to the aquatic sculpture Miraestels that I have in the Port of Barcelona; it is protecting the sea and asking for help by looking up at the sky. I have always thought that it would serve to connect with the afterlife, and ultimately, that is what has happened.
Llimós began painting pictures of these beings, and gallery owners and art critics turned up their noses. Despite his international prestige, many doors began to close to him. The paintings of extraterrestrials did not sell. Some thought Llimós was a fraud or a madman. But he continued to insist that it was his duty to show what he had experienced through his work.
I visited Robert Llimós’ studio, very close to Barceloneta, on a street near the Santa Caterina Market. Llimós welcomed me very kindly. With that deep gaze of artists, he told me that “clay is a language to explain what you are looking for. Painting is a path. What doesn’t interest me is the abstraction that has turned painting into a market.“ He struck me as a down-to-earth person: ”Art is fine, but you have to eat every day!”
When we got to the portraits of these long-necked, saurian-looking aliens, he told me about his encounter on Fortaleza beach. “The aliens are a kind of reptilian species. NASA has recorded more than a hundred of them. They haven’t interacted with us because we shoot at them, but they don’t fire missiles back. They are peaceful.”
I wasn’t there and I can’t say whether or not there were aliens, but the truth is that I find it hard to believe, because over the years your imagination becomes jaded and the roots of skepticism grow deep inside you. But I know that Llimós wasn’t lying: for him, it was the truth. Maybe the aliens were there, or maybe his mind made them appear, but the devotion with which he explains everything, knowing that it damages his image as a sought-after artist, is courageous. He understands the skepticism: “Later, I received information about other sightings, because otherwise I would have thought I was crazy.”
He also told me sadly that in the mid-1990s, “my son died and I was devastated. This has given me a new impetus.” Pain, when it is so great, is an entire universe.
If you go to the port and spend some time watching these Miraestels waiting for something to fall from the sky, you end up looking where they are looking. You end up trembling with their same uncertainty of small boats floating in an immense ocean
Antonio Iturbe is a journalist, a university professor, a writer, and, as if that weren’t enough, he is from Barceloneta.
