CHEMA MADOZ (Madrid, 1958)
Untitled, 2000.
Positive bromide virado. Copy 3/15.
With the label of the Galería Moriarty (Madrid) on the back.
Signed, dated and justified on the back.
Provenance: private collection conceived since the 70s between London and Madrid.
Measurements: 60 x 50 cm; 81 x 71,5 cm (frame).
The Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid has the first copy of this series. In its cataloguing the museum states "In 1995 Madoz took a photograph of a real cactus planted in a sewing thimble. The association of the spiky plant with the thimble triggered in the observer the hypothetical effect of a finger entering the thimble. In this photograph the cactus has become stone. Madoz has replaced the fleshiness of the plant with the inert hardness of the boulders. He composes his objects, but never disguises the nature of each one. That thimble was perfectly legible as a thimble; in this photograph the pot and the stones are also fully identifiable. This play with the recognisable makes the effect of surprise provoked by the union of disparate and even antithetical elements even more intense, because it places us before concrete and familiar fragments of reality. The artist proposes a certain distancing from the motif captured, which generally appears with a carefully prepared mise-en-scène. This scenographic distancing is not objective, because it seeks to provoke subjective reactions from the gaze that the photographer and the camera have decided to fix on paper".
Visual paradox is the fertile ground in which Chema Madoz moves. The way he interprets art through photography and his poetic vision make Madoz one of the most interesting, influential and recognisable creators on the contemporary art scene. Emphasising the irony that underlies the objects and the hidden relationships between them. In a surrealistic search for new meanings, through which to let the imagination wander towards new paths. Playing with the everyday, generating associations, metamorphoses, in a playful background, he generates a singular strangeness. His artistic work has been described as "analytical photography or visual trope" and his visual style as "surreal rationality or the logic of the oneiric", to refer to the compositions of objects that are the protagonists of his works - in the words of the philosopher and art historian Luis Arenas. Madoz manipulates, invents and photographs objects. Defined as a visual poet, the associations he develops from objects as commonplace as a key, a stone or a ladder lead to a torrent of creativity. In 1999 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presented the exhibition Madoz. Objects 1990-1999, the first solo exhibition that the museum dedicated to a living Spanish photographer. Internationally, he has exhibited at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Fondazione M. Marangoni in Florence, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow. He has received the National Photography Prize and the PHotoEspaña Prize in 2000, and the Culture Prize of the Community of Madrid in the category of Photography in 2012, among others.