“The gaze in the Other: Connections/ Confrontations” at Centro Cultural Español, Miami

The exhibition, organized by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Spain and curated by Artendencias, Carmen de la Guerra and Javier Díez, becomes an anthology of the history of Spanish photography across the last sixty years, visualizing unsuspected links among the works of different artists.

The exhibition will inaugurate at Centro Cultural Español, Miami, on January 18th. When viewing the exhibition as a whole, we can observe how the development of individual artists has been consistent with the transformation of Spanish society from the fifties to the present day.

After the civil war, pioneers such as Cualladó, Masats, Pérez Siquier or Joan Colom, portrayed a humbled Spain lacking in resources and overwhelmed by despair that was captured in their snapshots of family photographs, a country with striking contrasts between poverty and development, or the deprived neighborhoods of cities like Almería and Barcelona. Creators that started off using black and white and successfully adapted to the intense colors called for by the sunny “Spain is different” that was depicted in promoting the tourism industry.

These pioneers were followed by quite a different wave of creators as diverse as Cristina García Rodero, Pablo Pérez-Mínguez, Toni Catany or Humberto Rivas. “The Hidden Spain”, a series collected over a fifteen-year period by the La Mancha-born artist García Rodero, attracted international attention at the time and went on to be a complete success, with part of her archives being acquired by the Paul Getty Centre for ethnographic studies. This exhibition gathers some of her work in countries like Haiti and Ethiopia. Toni Catany, a refined artist with a passion for the old times and the photographic techniques that were used in the past, brings us closer to the Mediterranean with his still life compositions and nudes inspired by classical sculpture. Classicism and serenity are the hallmarks of the highly accomplished Argentinean-born photographer Humberto Rivas, based in Spain since the seventies and a prodigy photographing portraits and solitude, recording the passage of time as a clear sign of identity. Pablo Pérez-Mínguez, a cultural catalyst like few others with his magazine “Nueva Lente” (New Lens), is the bridge to the next generation of completely different creators on the pop spectrum of the “movida madrileña” cultural movement in Madrid, headed by the poetic works of Alberto García-Alix and Ouka Leele.

This great fresco of Spanish photography also includes more conceptual artists such as Joan Fontcuberta, Chema Madoz, Manuel Vilariño or Bleda and Rosa. Fontcuberta, a renowned theoretician, is an exponent of ‘metaphotography’ where the interplay of deception and confusion of the image and communication are highlighted with the support of digital technology. Chema Madoz is a visual narrator that resorts to metaphors composed of impossible objects. His characteristic strength and reflectiveness is shared to a certain extent by the Galician Manuel Vilariño, a poetic, spiritual, earthy and symbolic creator with close ties to nature and classical art, in whose works color and texture play a dominant role. Finally, there are Bleda and Rosa, a duo of young photographers based in London, for whom the passage of time, history, space and the traces left by mankind are very important themes.

This exhibition is organized by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Spain and The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, AECID, and supported by Embassy of Spain in Washington and the Spain-USA Foundation.

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“THE GAZE IN THE OTHER: CONNECTIONS/ CONFRONTATIONS”

At CCEM ● 1490 BISCAYNE BLVD ● MIAMI, FL 33132

Opening date: January 18 at 8:00pm

Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm