“If you find it, it’s yours!”is the phrase that the more than 8,500 Instagram followers of Joan Juncosa more they wait The artist has been pushing for years an interactive urban art project which started in Barcelona, then spread to other cities such as Porto and this weekend it arrives in Girona: hang painted hydraulic tiles in iconic spaces, leaving clues on the net, and if you get there before someone else finds them, you can take them away.
Juncosa only puts one condition: “whoever keeps it must take it to their favorite landscape and send me a photograph”, he explains. As a result of this agreement, his tile canvases have traveled to places as remote as Istanbul, San Francisco or Hong Kong.
Juncosa, an architect by profession, rediscovered his love of painting during confinement and found inspiration in the hydraulic floors of his house, floors with colorful geometric designs “which are basically works of art we step on every day».
Some time later, his neighbors were leaving the flat and he wanted to give them each a tile with the design of the dining room floor as a souvenir. “They returned the gift by sending me photographs of the tiles placed in special places and I thought it was a very nice exchange, because they took a piece of Barcelona with them and gave me a piece of their favorite place in return».
From there, the account @juncosa.art was born, in which it replicates the experience on a large scale and keeps adding followers.
Juncosa sticks his creations with adhesive tape on the walls of places he considers special, with the goal let his art move around the world. In two years he has distributed around 500 tiles in Barcelona, Madrid or Porto and professional commissions from companies and institutions have begun to come to him.
It has arrived in Girona with a suitcase filled with 24 painted tiles that reproduce the floor design of buildings in the city, such as the library of Casa Masó and has already started distributing them in places such as the surroundings of the Cathedral and the Pont de les Peixateries Velles.
Whoever finds them, can take them to continue the game and, with the hashtag #rajolespelmon, send the photo to Juncosa to follow the trail.
“I like to think that I only create half of the artwork and the other is completed by whoever finds it and he takes it to a landscape he loves”, says the artist.