Art Madrid'23 – Alberto García-Alix arrives to MUSAC with Shadows of the Wind

 

 

This October arrives at MUSAC (Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y Leon) Leon the solo exhibition of the photographer Alberto Garcia-Alix, curated by Nicolas Combarro. The exhibition, entitled "Shadows of the Wind", will focus on two of his most recurrent themes: the bike and portraits. The inauguration will take place on October 3 and, with this project, the MUSAC celebrates its tenth anniversary, and builds a bridge between the present and the past, based on two photo books published by García-Alix in 1993: Bikers and Los Malheridos, Los bienamados y los Traidores.

 

 

 

Alberto Garcia-Alix (León, 1956), National Award of Photography in 1999, lover of social portrait and motorcycles, is a key figure in the famous "Movida", Madrid´s cultural movement in which he portrayed a hundred personalities, family and friends.

 

In the exhibition you can see the evolution of García-Alix in photographic technique and treatment of these two elements that have been a constant in his artistic life. In his most recent works, we can see the passage of time and the evolution of the way toward abstraction and allegory.

 

 

 

 

 

The work of Alberto Garcia-Alix has been many times in MUSAC. With the exhibition "Emergencies" the museum opened on April 1, 2005. Three years ago Leon also enjoyed the "biographies" of the photographs from the museum's collection.

 

The artist, who has spent nearly 40 years devoted to photography, thinks that "the portrait requires a great capacity for understanding, which forces everyone to understand oneself. Portraying means paying attention to your surroundings, to other people, yourself. Many times I have felt the desire to put me to mourn in front of the camera, try to express, only with his eyes, feeling the passage of time ".

 

 

 

Through photographs, the viewer can interfere in the universe of García-Alix and take a tour of metaphors, absence and presence of the author.

 


 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.