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Madrid galleries reserve the ARCO period to highlight the work of one of the artists they work with. After a period of absence from the Juana de Aizpuru gallery, on this occasion Montserrat Soto (Barcelona, 1961) presents a synthesis, with new features, of landscapes during the tripthe series that he developed in recent years and that he started almost two decades ago.
In 2021, spring could be seen in Madrid at the Botanical Gardens –city of perdition. From nomad to being without a place– and in the CAB of Burgos –Road to Empire–, as the artist lives in the city of Gumiel de Izán, in Burgos. It now links directly to the start of the itinerary in the gallery, placed as a Virgilian journey to the Dantean underworld, and which ends at “End of section”, marked with “Hic et nunc”, “here and now”. An open and poetic conclusion with the image of a balcony invaded by weeds. Nature always destroying and, finally, human barbarism.
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Starting from a conceptual approach to photography, Soto is an ambitious researcher and archivist of the places we inhabit. Its records cover vast geographiesas can be seen in the real scenarios covered, which range from Damascus to New York, passing through Namibia, Tunisia, Cuba, São Paulo, Caracas, Jerusalem, Mauritania, Paris, Madrid or Barcelona.
Starting from a conceptual approach to photography, Soto is an ambitious researcher and archivist of the places we inhabit.
From multiple perspectives: social and anthropological, economic and political, and also ecological. A complexity in the approach to photography and the inclusion of visual culture in it that was summarized in “his commitment to memory and nature” upon receiving the award National Photography Award 2019.
To communicate such complexity, Soto uses signs with poles, signs and other real and digitally introduced signs, with which solves the semiotic problem of the relationship between image and wordmeaning and meaning, ambiguous in the mere photographic representation.
Between “the truth of signs and the signs of truth” of henri lefebvre, the artist emphasizes the construction of the photographic image to tell us about migrations and displacements, populations dense to the limit of survival and spaces abandoned to the greed of speculation. There where destructive power dwells, again and again.
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[Montserrat Soto: “In the digital era, photography has been freed from the chains of reality”]
In this world of continuous emergencies, where we are forced to live on alert for “black swans”, Unexpected but decisive events transform our lives, like the last pandemic; and the “gray swans”, those probable threats (economic, social, ecological) that we suspect, increasingly immersed in uncertainty.
And yet, in the explicit window that Soto's photographic image places, his denunciation is never obvious and always invites reflection through a nostalgic and poetic look, with a romantic background. Of that distanced and postmodern romanticismalien to any empathetic temptation but disrespectful to the human drama of the most disadvantaged, and that includes us, without renouncing the insurrection.
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