"The creation is a vehicle to exteriorise the hidden,
the superficial modification to express deep emotions".
Crystals begins in January 2010 by the need to release the rage and frustration that I felt after a conversation with someone who posed for me. What it was meant to be a beautiful and placid picture it turned into an obscure, degrading and unbearable one. I felt the need to break it into pieces, burn it and destroy it. And doing that made me feel better.
That is Crystals. From beauty to the reality that destroys it, and from there to the way we manage to mend our own life and the scars that this leaves on us.
The photos are burnt, treated with acids, alcohol and dyes. They’re torn, stitched or stapled in a visceral creative/destructive process that is constantly experimenting with technique, materials and its motives.
The use of resin as a stabilising element came up from the necessity to make the artwork perdurable and my desire to perpetuate, even more, something momentary. The polyester allows the degradation that I inflicted to the artwork to stay the same as time goes by. It protects what’s broken or torn and acts as a UV screen protector. Besides, I like the contrast between a material that is cold and fragile but hard with something that is torn, mended and still keeps signs of fire.
Each photograph is a whole world, a tale, a portrait to which I add my own fears, desires, frustrations and obsessions…or those from the ones posing for me. This makes my photographs tragic, distressing, aggressive, oneiric…other times they’re more tender, more humanlike.
Sometimes I start an artwork with an idea and, as I’m developing it, it begins to mutate and brings up to the surface feelings that were hidden inside which allows me to express what I really meant to say without being aware of it. Sometimes it is the reality of those people who pose for me that impresses me more and it ends up transforming my initial idea in their portraits.
These are unique pieces aimed at taking distance from the concept of photography as something that can be replicated. They are unique not only by the chemical treatment and manipulation that characterise each of them but because from each negative a one unique artwork is created.
