Exhibition on Catalan Chef Ferran Adrià in New York

Barcelona (ACN).- The Drawing Centre in New York will host an exhibition focused on the creative mind of internationally famous Chef Ferran Adrià, who used to run El Bulli, deemed the world’s best restaurant on five occasions. Ferran Adrià’s cuisine is characterised by taking a molecular approach towards cooking, transforming, taking apart and recasting typical ingredients into the extraordinary. Called both genius and insanity, the Catalan Chef’s goal was to push the boundaries of modern gastronomy, by embracing innovation and tantalising the senses in a spectacle of scientifically precise yet artistically creative food. According to the Ramon Llull Institute (IRL), a public body devoted to the promotion of Catalan culture and language abroad, this new exhibition entitled Ferran Adrià : Notes on Creativity, will reveal such a creative process, through drawings, notes and photographs taken in his 3-michelin-star El Bulli restaurant on the Costa Brava (northern Catalonia). The exhibition will run from the 25^th of January to the 28^th of February and will be accompanied by a catalogue published with the support of the IRL. Visitors of Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Arts (MOCA) can also discover Ferran Adrià’s creative mind in September 2014.

The exhibition wishes to convey the innovative, intellectual, and philosophical ideas of Chef Ferran Adrià regarding gastronomy. Such ideas are portrayed through wall drawings, framed pictures and other related ephemeral elements. Large-scale pictures taken in the Chef’s El Bulli kitchen will be displayed. El Bulli, which closed in 2011 to re-open as a culinary foundation promoting research and art in 2014, was considered to be the world’s best restaurant on five occasions. Aside from delving into the kitchen of the illustrious former restaurant, visitors will also discover a selection of books and sketches depicting menu creation, personal notes, architectural sketches for the elBulli Foundation, dishes recreated with play dough and drawings of prototypes for various kitchen utensils.

Side activities

Several side activities will be organised, notably the screening of Documenting Documena, which is centred on Adrià‘s participation to the 12^th edition of the Dokumenta contemporary arts exhibition in Germany. The premiere of 1846, a film produced by the Drawing Centre and portraying each of the dishes served at El Bulli, is also scheduled. Furthermore, Adrià will share a conference with Dan Barber, Chef and co-owner of New YorkBlue Hill restaurant, on the 23^rd of January, and also take part in a tour of the exhibition with the curator Brett Litman, on the 25^th, when it first opens to the public.