Javier Porto

“Portraits of a round trip

    Madrid. Nueva York. Year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty Something.

Exhibition / from 14th January to 7th February 2015

 

...Of course I knew who was Keith Haring, who was Robert Mapplethorpe, who was Andy Warhol
or who was Grace Jones... I was lucky to be there
...

Javier Porto

MONDO GALERIA presents a solo exhibition of the enigmatic photographer Javier Porto, who was a point of connection between the mythical city of New York and Madrid in those days when Andy Warhol and Pedro Almodóvar were protagonists of a well agitated night (and day) life. “La Movida” has exist as an artistic movement? Was there "Pop" as an active group? Or it is History what compels us to classify some trends of each era into a bag of soft candies?
 
Grace Jones, Alaska, Robert Mapplethorpe, Carlos Berlanga. The photographs by Javier Porto (Madrid, 1960) are, today, an historical document of a period in which what seemed most important was to destroy History. Some 25 snapshots in which we can find the similarities, distances and connections between two cities that have always desired and repudiated each other, seduced and envied one another, almost like a misunderstood love story.
 
To get rid of the past by creating a new present was the way that slowly but at variegated steps Postmodernity was built.
The early 80' are seem so far away today, and however, may be the beginning, the root of our current state of calm in which the spectacle seems to be the normality, sat every morning to our table.

 


About Javier Porto

While photographing the Madrid of Almodóvar, Nacha Pop, Favio MacNamara or Jaime Urrutia, Javier Porto met Robert Mapplethorpe at the Gallery of Fernando Vijande. He traveled to New York to be his assistant. There he related to the Other city, with the protagonists which included Susan Sontag, Grace Jones, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. This allowed him to be part, keeping the tacitly preferred by him, of situations that today seem to be part of urban Fables and however (and despite the time passed) still starring on the current cultural mesh which reinvents itself cyclically.

Grace Jones, 1984.
© Javier Porto
 
 

Andy Warhol, 1984.
© Javier Porto
 
 

Pedro Almodóvar y Carmen Maura en NY, 1985.
© Javier Porto
 

 

 
 
 

MONDO EDICIONES

"Keith Haring" (1985) by Javier Porto

15 x 10 cm / Pigment print on Hanhemühle Photo Rag

Edition of 99 /60,50 euros


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