Calendario

THE WAITING GAME III - Txema Salvans
3 NOV - 5 MAR '23

Name: THE WAITING GAME III - Txema Salvans 3 NOV - 5 MAR '23
Start: 2023-01-11T20:00
End: 2023-01-11T21:00
Location: {

OPENING 3 NOV - 20:00 H. after the artist's masterclass
3 NOV - 5 MAR '23
Tower Hall
Header image: Untitled, by Txema Salvans

Txema Salvans exhibits The Waiting Game III, as a result of his participation in the curatorial project Tender Puentes of the Museum. The work is framed, in turn, within his series of projects through which the artist speaks to us of such a universal activity as "waiting", in this case, "waiting". through which the artist talks about such a universal activity as "waiting", in this case, that of the dog.

The presence of dogs in photography usually responds to three basic motives: the dog fulfilling an instrumental function, as the subject portrayed or as a mere environmental element (accidental or not). In addition, there are other motifs derived from the previous ones: the dog as a paradigm of fidelity, a living cuddly toy or an endearing, amusing or ferocious being in its relationship with other animals or with people.

"My project aims at a function much less exploited so far by photography. I address an image inscribed in our visual memory and yet little represented in photography: that of the dog that guards the property in the absence of its masters. It is a dog, in general, chained, who spends his days behind a gate, a wall or a metal fence guarding an industrial warehouse, a farmhouse, the fence of a scrapyard or a luxury villa," says Salvans.

In line with the artist's current way of working, the work uses the large format and the tripod as technical resources that allow a slow and photographic time. The accuracy, the rigorous description, the sobriety in the composition and the selection of a distance up to the adjustment of the framing allow to control to the millimeter the selection of the point of view.

His work plan traces an intense tour of the peninsular Mediterranean. A luminous territory under the blinding light and the mineral brightness of the sun. A densely populated space, full of people and life. A territory that presents a peculiar vital culture, full of paradoxes that differentiates it from any other place and allows the artist to take a position not only physically, but also intellectually. Through his work he reflects his reflections on the recurrence of a landscape with a figure (animal) that, despite the landscape and technological changes, with advances in video surveillance or security, transcends history and remains there, as always.

In The waiting game, the initial project of the series, a project with which he won the 2012 RM Photobook Competition, Salvans portrayed prostitution on the road. In The waiting game II, continuation of the work, the protagonists were the fishermen of the ditch, marsh or port of the Mediterranean area.

In each series, the waitings share a type of space. Txema Salvans underlines this by editing exactly the same books where the only thing that varies is the word "Waiting".

BIOGRAPHY

Txema Salvans (1971) is a documentary photographer who alternated his studies in biology and photography. He studied at the ICP in New York thanks to a scholarship, from where he moved to La Fábrica, Benetton's center for artistic creation. First prize FotoPres in 1997, he won in 2005 the PhotoEspaña contest for the best Spanish photography book and in 2013 the Ibero-American Book contest of Editorial RM with his work The Waiting Game.

The essence of his work lies in the exploration of the wide and varied palette of human behaviors and longings that often surprises us. In recent years Salvans has been searching with his large format camera for the scenographies of leisure in the post-industrial society of the Mediterranean coast to emphasize their surreal banality and to sharpen the feeling of amused strangeness that they produce in us.

His work speaks to us of a collective self-deception that leads us to fantasize about transitory redoubts of paradise, but it also speaks to us of a paradox: we, the spectators of the photographs, are forbidden to see what the actors-in the photographs-want to see, and instead, what they do not want to see is rubbed into our eyes. Salvans has collaborated with magazines all over the world.

ROOM SHEET