WORK
FANTASIES AT EL PRADO
This work, carried out during the last three years with intermittent entrances to El Prado Museum, involves a search and the construction of an own imaginary with the great paintings and sculptures that the museum houses.
It has been a complex photographic exercise and one that I carried out somewhat blind to the result, always random. In analog film I blend two or three shots into one and all under the same light of the museum rooms. Of the shots, which will prevail? how to accentuate the second? How much should I close the diaphragm in the first and how much should I open in the second?… And in the third? I do these numbers while I value the fragments of the paintings and I look for a meaning in them.
Subjected to these types of questions, I have moved through rooms and corridors without giving myself rest. It is the work and its tension, its praxis and fatigue, but nothing is valuable, or comparable, with the emotion that stirred me when working with the paintings.
Focusing the camera, immersed in what I saw, sometimes my breath stopped and it seemed that time slept. I walked rapt between paintings that convulsed me. Many have a sublime power and when I approached to study them, they hypnotized.
I photographed immersed in endless resonances and phantasmagorias. Perceiving in the subjective and in the intuitive. I sought to give breath to the portrayed and flesh to the statues. I also looked in communication with history, politics and art, appropriating time, light and brushstrokes.
Fantasies at el Prado’s exhibition has been made possible thanks to the Lifetime Achievement Award that ENAIRE Foundation has awarded me this year.
Alberto Garcia-Alix
Madrid, 1st of June 2022
FANTASIES AT EL PRADO, REAL JARDÍN BOTÁNICO, MADRID 2022
FANTASÍAS EN EL PRADO, 2023 NAVES DE GAMAZO DE LA FUNDACIÓN ENAIRE EN SANTANDER
