UNTIL SUNDAY 1/9
CAIXAFORUM. Eduardo Primo Yúfera, 1A
The invention of photography made it possible to capture a part of reality faithfully. (also subjective, ojo) causing a paradigm shift in disciplines such as painting, that had been trying to imitate reality for five centuries. Stopped trying, among other things, because photography made it much better, but this one also ended up abdicating, tired of reproducing the world faithfully. Both analog photography (due to its chemical base), like digital, They are very malleable media that give rise to the introduction of alterations of all kinds and that is what the artists of the 20th century proposed by using and creating instruments that distanced their works from the perfect representation of reality.. The initial impact of the new invention has been overcome, What fun was there in reproducing reality as it is?? That's what it's about Expanded visions, to tell us the unconventional history of photography from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day following a thematic axis, not chronological. It does so hand in hand with the institution that guards one of the most important photography collections in Europe., the Pompidou Center, priority partner of CaixaForum since 2019 will sign an alliance to jointly organize content. This exhibition shows ways of inventing photography that have emerged in parallel with the advances in chemical and technical processes that were taking place.. Understood as the contemporary tool par excellence, the dadaists experimented with it, the surrealists and the constructivists at the beginning of the 20th century because it embodied freedom of action and thought, those who would come later diluted the borders between the different artistic disciplines and those of today, digital, They cross creative horizons never seen before and invite us to move on to Artificial Intelligence. But you don't have to put your hands on your head., said the curator of the exhibition Julie Jones at the presentation, image trickery has existed since the 20th century, as does the debate about its authenticity.
The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to experiments with light. Avant-garde artists such as Man Ray, Lee Miller o Maurice Tobard They extended the use of the frame technique, which was a photograph taken without a camera, by direct contact of objects with photosensitive paper, and they played with the evocative power of the negative image. The second section is dedicated to movement, which could be captured thanks to more manageable cameras and increasingly sensitive emulsions, to the delight of artists fascinated by movement such as the futurists. At CaixaForum we have the example of the Swiss Gérard Ifert, who created light drawings by moving a luminous pendulum on photosensitive paper that generated abstract geometric shapes, almost mathematics. The artists also modified the photograph directly, They applied colors and resins, They cut her with a scalpel or burned her, each following their own secret recipe to maintain the mystery. They are integrated into the section Alterations, where we find Roger Parry, to Italian Paolo Gioli, who transferred Polaroid images to delicate silks to honor photography pioneers such as Nicéphore Niépce. Another section, Vision tested, focuses on those photographers who borrow scientific or military technology such as the microscope, the x-ray, the telescope, panoramic or infrared to take it to your terrain. lo and behold Direct electric spark (1885) of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, the oldest photograph in the Center Pompidou collection, an image (obtained without camera) of the trace left by the spark of a short circuit on the surface of silver salts of the photographic plate. The exhibition ends with images that deform reality with superimpositions on the same negative, combination of different negatives, cuts from different images to create collages or digital modifications of the shot, often with the intention of making social or political criticism. Here appears the first and only Valencian in the exhibition, Joseph Renau, with on collage Society of consumption, alongside artists of the stature of Jean-Paul Goude, who at the end of the seventies began to cut out and recompose with adhesive tape the bodies of the models he photographed, like that of his wife Grace Jones. The Hungarian Brace, who, starting in the 1930s, dedicated himself to documenting urban graffiti; signs, faces, lines, animals and masks that populated the walls of the cities he visited. With cutouts of these photographs he created large photomontages such as Nocturne, conceived as a sketch for the making of a tapestry. It is one of ninety works by authors such as Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, Barbara Kruger, Aleksandr Ródchenko, Constantin BrâncuANDi, André Breton, Raoul Hausmann o Kurt Schwitters that CaixaForum and the Center Pompidou take the stage to explore photographic experimentation from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. S.M.
