Chema Madoz

CHEMA MADOZ (Madrid, 1958).
S/t, 1987.
Photography on paper.
Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 57 x 43 cm.
This photograph by Chema Madoz presents a black and white composition that combines the delicacy of the everyday with the symbolic charge of the surreal. A root is placed in a simple and transparent vase, which holds it as if it were a strange flower, inverted in its usual meaning.
The light, carefully directed, casts the shadow of the root on the arm of a person, whose body remains submerged in the gloom. The shadow aligns, creating the visual illusion that the root is the figure's bloodstream, an extension of his being, as if nature had grafted itself onto the human.

The composition is minimalist, charged with poetic tension. The root, symbol of origin, connection and subterranean life, becomes here a metaphor of vitality itself, of what nourishes us from within, though invisible.
Faithful to Madoz's style, the image provokes a visual and intellectual reflection, where everyday objects are re-signified, blurring the border between the real and the poetic. This photograph is a silent heartbeat, where the root becomes an artery, and the shadow, a secret map of inner life.

The way he interprets art through photography and his poetic vision make Chema Madoz one of the most interesting, influential and recognizable creators of the contemporary art scene. Emphasizing the irony that underlies the objects and the hidden relationships between them. In a surrealistic search for new meanings, through which to let the imagination wander towards new paths, there is always an undercurrent of play. Playing in the everyday, generating associations, metamorphoses, in a playful background he generates a singular strangeness. His artistic work has been described as "analytical photography or visual trope" and his visual style as "surreal rationality or logic of the oneiric", to refer to the compositions of objects that star in his works -in the words of the philosopher and art historian Luis Arenas-. Madoz manipulates, invents and photographs objects. Defined as a visual poet, the associations he develops from objects as usual as a key, a stone or a ladder lead to a torrent of creativity. In 1999 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presented the exhibition Madoz. Objects 1990-1999, the first solo exhibition that the museum dedicated to a living Spanish photographer. Internationally he has exhibited in institutions such as the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Fondazione M. Marangoni in Florence, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow. He has received the National Photography Award and the PHotoEspaña Award in 2000, and the Culture Award of the Community of Madrid in the category of Photography in 2012, among others.