PHOTOGRAPHER PAINTERS

Some images defy gravity and the natural order that surrounds us. This is manifest in the equilibrium running through the contact sheets of Madrid-born Guillermo Mora (Alcalá de Henares, Spain, 1980). Through the repetition of elements, colours and simple shapes, from one moment to the next one’s view establishes relationships. His viewpoint is required to see the obvious, both playful and suggestive, inviting you to see the world the way he does. Although painting is the departure point, Mora does not merely contemplate but also pushes towards new boundaries that challenge the natural order of things. His sculptures also display this internal struggle between the different properties of objects, encompassing extremes between smoothness and craquelure, volatility and robustness.

Any photography collection runs the risk of depicting the image via a common theme, but at the same time the image is freed of these ties rarely applicable to a solitary photo since the watershed moment of Henry Cartier-Bresson in the annals of photography. In the 21st century the image may not remain immobile, nor even depict a passing moment or single idea. The image is digital, pushed and pulled by myriad reference points which in addition to being ingrained on the viewers memory, Guillermo Mora has prepared his mosaics beforehand to guide us through his chart of connections and sensations. As anticipated by historian Aby Warburg, the imagery would change the history of art and as we later learned, suggested a tangible or emotional relationship with the images and our experience. Neither History nor the images are linear or follow the other like in a diaporama or exhibition but rather they coexist.

The suggestive capacity of photography-the so-called key factor that raises the ordinary to a work of art—is multiplied in these interactive works. Each image marks its companion, creating a playful dialogue between the images, the spectator and the author, uniting them in a cyclical space where all images, as the artist asserts, deserve a second chance.