Alberto García-Alix, Menorca
April 26 – May 31
Alberto García-Alix, one of the most important names in contemporary European photography, presents an extensive exhibition of images from the last four decades at Albarrán Bourdais in Mahón. Winner of the National Photography Prize in 1999, his career constitutes a document of the social changes in Spain since the 1980s and at the same time establishes a complex universe in which each image acquires a poetic and transcendental character.
The exhibition features of a total of 58 black and white images taken over the last four decades. As a whole, they reveal the development and evolution of the author’s gaze and photographic technique. Ranging from his earliest photographs, of a more intimate and autobiographical nature, taken with 35 mm analogue film, to recent images, in medium format and using multiple photographic exposure, they show the evolution of García-Alix towards expressionist, abstract and poetic positions.
The ground floor of the gallery focuses on nature and landscape photographs. Taken between 1990 and the first decade of the 2000s, they are realistic images that, when reinterpreted through the photographer’s eyes, exude tension and character of their own. “A way of seeing is a way of being”, explains the photographer.
On the first floor are images of a more autobiographical nature, reflecting his world, his experiences and his closest circle. They distil the cultural turmoil of Madrid in the 1980s. Portraiture, a discipline that is a constant feature of his work and which is evident throughout the exhibition, is the main focus of his work during this period.
The exhibition features portraits both of his intimate surroundings and of personalities of the time, captured from an autobiographical point of view, far removed from stereotypes. ‘I understand portraiture as a dialogue, a singular pulse between photographer and model. This encounter and its consequences is often magical,’ says the author. Ana Curra, Alaska, Santiago Auserón and Edi Clavo are some of the people portrayed.
On the second floor of the historic mansion that houses the Menorca gallery, we enter the photographer’s most expressionist side: a set of images from his most recent projects, largely taken using the technique of multiple exposure photography on analogue film. With this practice, García-Alix superimposes faces, bodies, paintings, landscapes and different objects to create his own imaginary, to construct his own invented world, suggesting other meanings and textures.
On display in this room are some of the photographs from the evocative series ‘Fantasies in the Prado’, the result of four years of photographing masterpieces from the Prado Museum’s art gallery. With his camera, García-Alix repaints the masterpieces, giving them mystery, tension and movement, from a light sfumato to a disturbing movement.
“I photographed immersed in a myriad of resonances and phantasmagorias. Perceiving the subjective and the intuitive. I sought to give breath to the portraits and flesh to the statues. I also looked in communication with history, politics and art, appropriating time, light and brushstrokes”, explains Alberto García-Alix about this series.
Scattered throughout the gallery, we also find self-portraits from different periods. It is a discipline with which the photographer has experimented since the beginning of his career, in an exercise of finding himself through photography. García-Alix has constantly photographed himself, sometimes raw and sharp in scenes of great intimacy, and at other times hidden behind the blur or double exposure. “To look is also to look at oneself”, says the artist. “Self-portraiture is another constant photographic exercise in my work. The images are mirrors.”
The exhibition at Albarrán Bourdais celebrates the career of a key figure in photography, recognised for photographs that have fled censorship to construct a complex universe, in which each image acquires a poetic and transcendental character.