Asier Rua

“Madrid Interior

Photography Exhibition / 24th September - 10th October 2015

...Madrid is about having nothing but about having everything.”.

Ramón Gómez de la Serna

MONDO GALERIA presents “Madrid Interior,” the first solo photography exhibition of Asier Rua. The viewer is invited to get to know Madrid in a very special way, a way in which colour and history merge to reveal a latent city belonging to everyone, without intimacy or privacy. Fifteen photographs have been selected, from the ninety-three available in his book, which offer us a tour that began in the artist’s mind 7 years ago. For the first time in the city of Madrid, the photographs allow us to see the city blessed with colour and the chaotic elegance that is quintessentially Madridleño, which Rua has managed to capture in these images. 

The exhibition is a tour of some iconic sites like the Madrid Casino owned by Jaime Hayón, Florida Park or the Spanish Film Library; or private spaces created by people for whom colour is a hallmark, such as the houses of Ouka Lee, Pepe Leal or Ágata Ruiz of La Prada, and the shops of Lorenzo Castillo and Guile García- Hoz. Projects by architects Izaskun Chinchilla, Andrés Jaque and Teresa Sapey are also portrayed. But this portrayal of Madrid would not be complete without the spaces of anonymous people, since the intention is not to reflect the interior design of Madrid but to capture the polyhedral essence of the city.

In some cases it is the history that gives value to the photographs because the passage of time and day-to-day life have impacted the spaces, as is the case of the mural that appears in the Almodóvar film ‘Labyrinth of Passions,’ home of the character Sexi (Cecilia Roth).

Accompanying the exhibition MONDO EDICIONES presents a limited edition prints based on photographs from “Madrid Interior” that can be purchased during the show. After the show they will become part of the MONDO GALERIA collection of public/affordable alternatives for those who want to start/continue their own art collections. 

Read more …"Madrid Interior" - Asier Rua


MONDO GALERIA presents for the first time in Madrid "Proscenium" a solo exhibition by Javier Silva Meinel (Lima, Peru. 1949). It is an exhibition that without being retrospective or an anthology runs through the entire oeuvre of this prolific photographer (or ethnographer) who has managed to find, represent and understand Peruvian folklore.
Twenty five images to glimpse through the eye of Silva the naturalness and humor connecting all simultaneous worlds that inhabit the Andes, from the Pacific coast to the Amazon rainforest. His works has been showed around the world and it is included on important international collections. This exhibition is part of Festival OFF Photoespaña 2015.

Proscenium.
 

 
Just only few authors manage to cross the space between the camera and the subject.
 
As Photography is increasingly further from truth to be closer to narrative, to tell what one sees it is not simply to present it to a viewer, but, to confront the Viewer with it.
To create certain guidelines to distance us from the obvious thing it is much harder than to master a technical expertise. 
 
When these two conditions meet up, we face an unparalleled visual epiphany. This is photography as art, as revelation and as a trigger for ideas.
 
To jump from performer to audience without an hegemonic dispute it is a mastery not found very often, and it is then when a literary image becomes an icon, when a person becomes a sign.
 
The Other, as it has been known for centuries does no longer exist, we live into a democratization of processes which makes all of us participants of a choral creation of archetypes.
 
Photography is essential in this process, it vanishes (for better or for worse) social differences. All we have seen, and have consumed, The Other, the faraway self, the different one. But until only very recent, we have not had the opportunity to enjoy it, to appreciate it, to understand it.
 
Otherness disappears as archaic iconography to be part of the process of contemporary creation of which Javier Silva Meinel is a pioneer. He is an expert, a scholar, a shaman.
 
Breaking the barrier of ethnic documentation creates a new way for which photography (and art) were not prepared. It creates a scene where The Other passes from being observed to be protagonist; it generates a break of axis where the new applied rules replace observation with respect and qualification with empathy. This is the path that takes contemporary photography towards a participative ethnography, and towards shared creation. Without a dispute, without wars, based on understanding and collaboration.
 

About Javier Silva Meinel

 
Javier Silva Meinel was born in the city of Lima, Peru in the year 1949. He enter in contact with photography as a student at the University of Lima. In 1971 he began his work as a photographer and he was dedicated to landscape and commercial work. From 1984 he ventured into portrait, interested in rituals, customs and Andean religious festivals, as well as in the world of native Amazonia. Since his first solo exhibition "Searching for a photographic intention" (Lima, 1978) a series of solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad followed, such as:
 
 
“Municipalidad de Lima“, “Palacio del Inca Tupac Yupanqui“ Cuzco, “Museo de la Nación“, “Circulo de Bellas Artes“ Madrid, “Brooklyn Museum“ N.Y. etc.

 He exhibits at Throckmorton Fine Art in N.Y.C.
In 2001 he exhibits at “Cleaveland Museum”, Cleaveland, and takes part of an important group show in Venezuela “29 Miradas de un mismo lugar” as well as at the Festival of Noorderlicht en Gronningen, Holland.  Again he exhibits at Throckmorton Fine Art in N.Y.C. “Tres visiones del Perú”; at Eye See Gallery Belgium; and in Palma de Mallorca, España (PalmaPhoto 2003); at Museo de las Américas in Denver Colorado, USA; and at Museum of Photographics Arts of San Diego, California.


 
His works are in private collections and at museum ones as: Brooklyn Museum, Houston Museum, Museum of
Photographic Art in San Diego, Museo de las Américas, Denver, Colorado, Art Museum New Orleans  and at the new Museo de Arte in Lima.


 
He has published the following books: “El Libro de los Encantados” in 1988; “Acho, Altar de Arena” in 1992; “Perú, fiestas y costumbres” in 1997; “Calendario Perú, Tiempos de fiesta” in 1998. "Visiones de Machu Picchu" in 2011 and in 2012 his work was published in Spain into the collection Photo Bolsillo by  La Fábrica Editorial.
In 1990 he receives the grant of John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
 

Cunchimama, Iquitos. Perú 2003
© Javier Silva Meinel
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA

La Risa. Ccatcca, Cuzco, Perú. 1996
© Javier Silva Meinel
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA
 

Rostro con peces. Shipibo Conibo. Pucallpa, Perú. 1995
© Javier Silva Meinel
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA

 

Arahuana, Iquitos, Perú, 2004
© Javier Silva Meinel
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA
 

Franco Fontana

“Color

Exhibit of photographs / from 20 February to 4 April 2015

...Photography does not need to copy what is visible, but it should make visible what it is invisible.”

Franco Fontana
 

MONDO GALERIA presents for the first time in Madrid a solo exhibit by ‘the photographer of colour’: Franco Fontana (Modena, 1933). The photographs done by this prolific Italian artist show us his personal world, created in between the parameters imposed by the photographic lens. The colour composition is the first thing that strikes us from these images that create a non-chronological overlook of his oeuvre. In the 60’ Fontana constructs his imagery inside the rural Italian landscape and then he moves forward to Europe firs and to urban American landscape after that. Finally in the last decades he arrives to female body and later to classical sculpture that are what he photographs today. His work is part of the most important international collections including NY MOMA, Modern Art Museum of Paris or IVAM in Valencia

This exhibit is possible thanks to a collaboration with Sabrina Raffaghello Arte Contemporanea and the Instituto Italiano de Cultura in Madrid and brings to us the works of a photographer who creates a photographic discourse that didn´t exist before him. Mastering the elements offered by photography to distort the world, Fontana creates a series of abstract landscapes (at the beginning) and stories filled with emptiness (later) moving us to an imaginary space in between the literature of the American novelist Raymond Carver and the theorist lucubration by Italo Calvino.

Casual but elaborated compositions, soft brush strokes of what we all have in front and just a few see is what fills this works with a familiarity full of sophistication. The nicest thing in his work is that complex things appear as easy, and the abstract thought enters our eyes as never before full of figures.



About Franco Fontana


Born in Modena in 1933. He began photographing in ‘61 and his first solo shows were in Turin in ‘65 and in Modena in ‘68.

This last exhibition marks a turning point in his research: in the practice of photography he began inventing his own language, closely balancing abstraction and the everyday pragmatism which is typical of his native land. He attempts to reconcile macrocosm and microcosm as his contemplative subjects. «Fontana has been able to generate “the photographic colour” without transferring its sign as idea» (A.C. Quintavalle). He has published over 40 books in Italian, Japanese, French, German, Swiss, American and Spanish editions, and has exhibited in over 400 solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world.

His works are present in 50 international public collections including MoMA (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Musée d’Art Moderne (Paris), Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Torino).

He has received numerous awards including the Cologne Photokina (1974), the appointment of Master Photographer from the Italian FIAF (1995) and the honorary degree in ecofriendly Product Design (2006, Faculty of Architecture, Polytechnic of Turin).

He signed many advertising campaigns (Canon, Railways, Fiat, Robe di Kappa, Snam, Sony, Volkswagen and Volvo, Versace, Kodak).
He held conferences and workshops abroad (Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tokyo Institute of Technology Academy of Brussels, University of Toronto) and in several Italian cities. He has collaborated with magazines and newspapers such as Time-Life, Vogue USA and Vogue France, Venerdì (La Repubblica), Sette (Corriere della Sera), Panorama, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Epoca, Class, New York Times.
He is Artistic Director of the Toscana Foto Festival, and he collaborated with the Centre Pompidou and the Ministries of Culture of France and Japan.

In 2011 he is invited in the Biennale of Alessandria with a solo project “Vita Nova” and in the Biennale of Venice in Italian Pavilion by the curator Vittorio Sgarbi.

Phoenix, 1979
© Franco Fontana
MONDO GALERIA
 
 

 

 

 

 

Rif Spahni

“Paisajes de un exilio

(Landscapes of an Exile)

Photography Exhibition / 9th - 17th February 2015

The aritsit will be available for book signings and the publisher Montse Puig will be here to present ANÓMALAS.

Opening Tuesday 10th FEBRUARY 2015 – 20:00

 

...What do all exiles have in common, starting with the first, that of Ulises, who took twenty years to return to his island after the Trojan war? Maybe a sense of unreality.

Rif Spahni

MONDO GALERIA presents the solo exhibition of Rif Spanhi (Mallorca 1972). In this exhibition we will be able to discover the work he completed in the Algerian Sahara.

 

The photographs from the exhibition are compiled in the book “Paisajes de un exilo,” published by Ediciones Anómales in 2012 to present a poetic photographic vision concerning the tragic reality of exiles. Tindouf camps become a vehicle to transport us within the psyche of an exile: a sense of distance, uprooting, and a deep understanding of the human condition.

Time is only capable of moving forward, it cannot stop. These photos where made with a pinhole camera to accentuate this idea and present a dreamy mist, representing the irrevocable condition of human memory and inviting us to re-interpret the artist’s vision, which abstracts the experience to the very essence of human sensation.

Against the continuous stream of hyper-realistic images that illustrate today’s conflicts, Spanhi’s haikus penetrate much deeper than simply the surface of one’s retina. They memorialize, question and involve.

This photography exhibition was realized thanks to Anna Sever (ASA Agency). On the opening night the artist will be available for book signings and accompanied by his publisher Montse Puig (Anomalous Editions), with mention of connected authors José Manuel Navia, Israel Ariño and Salvi Danés.

 

About Rif Spanhi

Rif Spanhi was born in 1972, Mallorca.

His very personal work is a reflection of his habitat. The places that we live, the landscapes we conform to – we cannot help but be shaped by them. Our relationship with the landscape – man – naturally defines Spanhi’s work.

His work has featured as a finalist in international competitions like “People-Places-Things,” of The Center for Fine Art Photography Colorado, The London Photographic Awards Adsight 2005, and he received a mention of honor in the IPA 2006 prize, among others. His work has also been exhibited in Palma in Mallorca, Barcelona, Seville, Castellón, London, Lima and Colorado.
 
 

 

Algeria 2005
© Rif Spanhi
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA
 

Algeria 2006
© Rif Spanhi
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA
 

Algeria 2007
© Rif Spanhi
Cortesía MONDO GALERIA
 
 

 
Paysages d’un exile

Rif Spahni

Texto de María Zambrano.
Edición numerada de 1000 ejemplares.
ISBN: 978-84-615-5649-6.
Tapa dura con tela. 13 x 21 cm. 84 páginas.
Precio: 28€.


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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