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21 exhibitions in Barcelona
Los Mares Vuelven a Ser Montañas
El Reverso del Paisaje
SPIRITUS MUNDI
10X
INSTITUT D'ESTUDIS FOTOGRÀFICS
DE CATALUNYA
Specimina
A Topography of Micro Planets
Ferida Espectral
The Corridor of Eclipses
Sin Título
Elements: Fire
Mind Games
In the Raw Wind of the New World
The Distortion of Pain
Clouds Revealed
Share or Dye Europe Wide
Ephemeral impressions. Rediscovering the Experimental Vision of William Henry Fox Talbot
Los Mares Vuelven a Ser Montañas
Before, seas were seas and mountains were mountains.
Then, seas were clouds and mountains were stones.
Now, seas are once more mountains and mountains are once more seas.
Ephemeral Impressions
Rediscovering William Henry Fox Talbot's Experimental Vision
This exhibition highlights the pioneering vision of William Henry Fox Talbot as a scientist, inventor and "painter with light". Based on the seminal experiments of Humphrey Davy and Thomas Wedgwood in 1802, Talbot embarked on a journey of trial and error to develop a method for fixing images captured through the camera obscura. Rather than emphasizing the representation of reality as a product, this exhibition presents the lesser-known works, those that explore the fundamental principles of photography itself. Through the presentation of his most innovative contributions, the exhibition invites viewers to reassess the 19th century as the beginning of experimental photography.
Pablo Giori
director of Àgora, School of Experimentation
SPRITUS MUNDI
In the industrial era, Man was placed as the master of his environment.
In recent years, we have sterilized our bodies, our habitats, our soils...
But do we know that most of those bacteria that disgust us are essential for our survival? That a living and healthy body or soil is due to the balance of its microbiota?
The climate change demands that we take a stand, move away from the pyramidal hierarchy that separates us from natural genius and integrate into a horizontal system where man and his environment work in symbiosis. To do this, it is essential to reconnect with our nature. The biological and chemical mechanisms that surround us are enclosed in the scientific space governed by strict rules and destined for the initiated.
Through experimentation, I seek to open the borders of science, to offer the public an experience that connects the poetry of life with dreams. Appropriating scientific tools and techniques allows me to restore the bonds between human beings and their environment. I explore and create systemic works where material, life, and humans are interdependent.
Pure life.
El Reverso del Paisaje
The Reverse of Landscape is an exhibition that brings together a series of Photochemical Artist's Books made in Gum Bichromate, a 19th century photo-pictorial technique. Through a process which entails color manipulation, the use of photosensitive matter and interventions in their architecture, these works of art, which are images of moving landscapes, of routes that are swept into a blur and fragments that are born at the edge of the road, become dialogue. It is in this way that they unfold as visual poems that are always playing a game with time, their pages turning as we are visually reading suggestive sequences about the experiences of the journey, and the landscape as constant transformation.
A Topography of Micro Planets
This project was created by collaborating with microbial cultures on the surface of photographic film to create new Micro Planets which operate as topographic studies of microbial landscapes. The images presented act as cross-species collaborations that transcend terrestrial ecology to reflect what life may look like on other planets, and across vastly different scales. Alongside the Micro Planets, Hero presents the petri dish ephemera from her scientific process, illuminated as lightboxes prompting the audience to peer down into these objects of curiosity, as if peering down the lens of a microscope viewing the tiny worlds displayed through the photographs.
Specimina
These vividly-colored, origami-like Figure sculptures are produced using black and white photographic sheet film. None of this color is the intended function of the material, but rather, it emerges through an experimental material process. To make these works, the film is folded and exposed to the sun for a period of time before fixing and washing it to stop the exposure. The particular range of colors in each piece depends on the film type, exposure time, spectral quality of the light, the number of folded layers, temperature, and other environmental factors. Each Figure represents a specific adaptation to the laws of planar geometry, along with the physical contingencies of light and incidental chemistry.
Elements: Fire
Elements is a project that seeks to study the deep connection of everything, exploring and documenting the transformation that occurs when elements interact with photographic negatives. By intervening with water, fire, air, and earth, the project aims to uncover the hidden stories and visual poetry embedded in nature. Delving into the unpredictability and causality of analogue photographic processes, allowing the elements to leave their distinctive mark on the film, thus capturing the very essence of these elemental forces. Each of these images is a visual testimony of the duality of fire (destruction and creation, passion and calm, light and darkness…), and a manifestation of the power of latent transmutation in the film that, when exposed to this element, results in unexpected colours, shapes, and textures. This exhibition is an acknowledgement of strength and fragility, an invitation to reflect on the ephemeral nature of our existence and the constant transformation that defines our reality.
Cloud Reveales
Clouds are fascinating. They have a romantic, dreamy appearance but can also be terrifying and threatening. Clouds are indeterminate, have no specific location, and are in constant motion. Looking at the clouds for 10 minutes every day makes you happier, according to Professor Laurie Santos of Yale University. We see figures in it, sometimes whole worlds, and we can dream away in it. However, the clouds appear to be moving toward the poles and higher in the atmosphere, making them less effective at cooling the Earth. In the climate issue,, they are the “wildcard” because it is difficult to place clouds in computer models. Relatively speaking, they are too small and change quickly, making them difficult to ‘touch’. Among other things, scientists are looking for ways to grow clouds to help cool the earth. With her work, Hilde Maassen wants people to look differently, more consciously at clouds as part of climate change because we often take them for granted in daily life. Simultaneously making work in which people can dream away again, travel back in wonder in amazement, lying on their backs in the grass, recognizing figures in the clouds.
10X
In 2021, I drove across the United States making photographs and multimedia captures of the land and people. During that trip I experimented with a variety of photography techniques to explore the limits of documentation as a practice. By accident, I turned on a camera mode that overlayed ten different exposures onto one. This useful accident produced interesting images that combined multiple perspectives, framings, and color blends. In some cases the effect was quite beautiful. Since then, I have used this multiple exposure technique in many projects. I refined my approach and have an expressive visual vocabulary with it. All images are produced inside the camera using ten exposures. No computer software or AI tools are used. What the viewer sees is what was produced out in the field.
Ferida espectral
Is it possible to access unrecorded pasts through photography?
Like millions of mixed-race people in Latin America, my origin is oblivion. Through ephemeral photography, I explore how the colonization process in Latin America determined the disappearance of native and African cultures in favor of the installation of European culture and its dominance over the American territory; which has left a spectral wound in our bodies: the configuration of our face shows that our origin is colonization, its violence, and the oblivion it implies. I visually conjure a past to which I have not been able to access and invoke the ghosts so that they have an imagetic presence in other temporalities and not allow them to be, once again, forgotten. This work summarizes the difficulty of accessing information about origins in contexts that underwent colonization processes with miscegenation and the difficulty in configuring identities that rest on some history more dignified than being the product of a violent takeover of territory. With this photographic ritual, I question that romanticized vision of miscegenation that points it out as a simple “encounter” between cultures and ethnic groups.
Mind Games
I have been using pinhole photography for artistic expression since 1993. The Mind Games series began in 2005 and is my first major pinhole work in colour.
When I first started using the three-hole Pinhole Blender camera it felt like a good tool for creating stories. Usually, I search for three scenes or objects that somehow go together. I look for humour, irony, and social statements when combining the three images into one photograph. Sometimes the center image is strong enough to stand on its own; the side images are used to isolate the subject from its normal environment thus drawing the viewer into the center power spot.
The resulting collage of three overlapping images is created in the analogue camera, not on a computer. After capture, I have the medium format 120-size colour negative film developed by a lab. Then, I scan the negatives into the computer, do the colour processing, and output them as archival inkjet prints.
The photos in this series were taken between 2005-2011 and were exhibited in five solo shows in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Chiba, Japan in 2011-2012 and published as a book in 2019.
The Distortion of Pain
This series aims to articulate the pain and disruption that takes over my senses when dealing with chronic migraines. Each photograph undergoes a deliberate albeit uncontrollable process of deconstruction through resists being placed on the image while submerged in traditional silver gelatin chemistry. My process reflects the constant tension between order and disorder, much like the balance disrupted within the brain during a migraine. The distortion symbolizes the fractured moments of life affected by the invisible struggle, capturing the essence of pain that permeates both the physical and emotional realms. Beyond mere representation, my work aims to invite viewers into an understanding of the profound challenges faced by those who navigate life with chronic pain. By pushing the boundaries of traditional photography, I seek to amplify the silence that often shrouds this neurological disorder. Through the interplay of manipulated imagery, I invite viewers to witness the spirit of those who endure the unrelenting impact of chronic pain, acknowledging the strength required to navigate a world that often misunderstands the profound impact of an invisible struggle.
Sin Título
This exhibit questions the widespread need that exists today to constantly define ourselves. To create a detailed profile that determines who we are as a letter of introduction to the world and that this defines us for life. We categorize people as if we were products. I have found myself prolonging the process of searching for my identity. I have fallen into the typical phrase of “finding myself”, making this a slow and complicated process. When really it is something much simpler. I carry it inside. My identity is intrinsic in me. I just have to be. In the same way, I wanted to represent the separation of the subject from its context, which is part of my need to distance myself from my environment so that it does not define me. I have used the technical process as a reflection of my personal process. Going from physical to digital, and vice versa, multiple times and manipulating the image at each of these stages with the intention of “wearing out” the image more and more. Prolonging a process that could be very simple.
The Corridor of Eclipses
The Corridor of Eclipses time is strange and mysterious. Almost timelessness between solar and lunar eclipses. The concept, described in detail in astrology, in art becomes a metaphor for the state of a person and the world around him, in which there is no balance. Tragic disintegration and incredible rebirth, destruction and restoration - everything is possible during this period, which inevitably happens twice a year. This photographic series is a profound reflection of artists on our world which in this period is in the long The Corridor of Eclipses. The world having thousands of possibilities for development falls and collapses in senseless wars and battles for power and money, but I believe that we will emerge from the dark corridor into the light and a great renaissance of our world will come. Curator Victor Senkov.
In the Raw Wind of the New World
In the Raw Wind of the New World, a poignant exhibition by Ng YukTsang, captures the essence of transient memories in our digitally dominated world, focusing on the nuances of his past long-distance relationship from London to Hong Kong. This series, inspired by Ng's personal experiences and the insights from Byung-Chul Han's The Agony of Eros, reflects on the societal implications of modern diasporas and the pervasive nature of image culture in a globalized context. Through his archived photographs, Ng explores the paradox of abundant intimate photos post-relationship, pondering over the detachment of love amidst technological advancements. The exhibition intricately crafts an environment reminiscent of Ng's transient living spaces in London—spaces that, while not home, served as temporal refuges during his student days. This setting merges the ambience of his bedroom with the remnants of moving homes, characterized by tape and fragmented corners of photos left on walls. This work not only explores the profound experiences of Ng's long-distance relationship but also delves into the broader societal impacts of our interconnected yet physically distant world. Through his art, Ng invites viewers to contemplate the essence of memory, the transient nature of relationships, and the potential for photography to bridge the gap between digital detachment and tangible emotional connections.
Share, Tag or Dye Europe
All of you who joined us contributed with a link from your social media feeds to be brought into “matter” using a nineteenth-century technique, cyanotype that is, a technique based on iron salts that are UV sensitive, yielding a deep blue print. The technique is credited to Sir John Herschel (1842), although he used it mostly for reproducing notes. It was a woman who first used this process under a fotografic démarche - botanist Anna Atkins, in her Photographs of British Algæ: Cyanotype Impressions. This is also the first book with photographic illustrations - pretty cool, right? Do you sometimes feel like the time you spend on social media self-promoting your work is much longer than the time you spend actually working, and even then, your work doesn't get seen? We asked this same question last year around this time. 2 years after we launched the first edition of Share, Tag or Dye, we still feel this way. So, we do our duty and keep on asking, since it seems we're not the only ones with this dilemma. In the first 2 editions, more than 500 people from over 40 countries around the world joined us to Share, Tag or Dye! Were you among them? Yes? Well, we’re glad to (re)see you! Not? Well, now’s your time (again)! Only this time around, we go bigger. That is 5 locations in 3 countries. We Share, Tag or Dye Europe Wide!
