Jon Gorospe

Jon Gorospe - Polished Cities: Light Lines

Artist Biography: Jon Gorospe, Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain, 1986). Graduated from the EASD of the Basque Country and the Faculty of Arts of Vilnius (Lithuania). He completed his training with different authors from the world of photography, auteur cinema and visual arts. His work has been recognized by numerous public and private institutions, such as the Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum (USA), the Sasakawa Foundation (Japan-Scandinavia) or Futures Photography (Creative Europe Programme). He has exhibited his work in different countries such as: Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, England, Slovakia, Norway, Russia or Singapore. An important part of his work focuses on new approaches to the idea of anthropized landscape, developing different bodies of work such as Polished Cities (2018-in process), Metropolis (2018-2019) or Environments (2014-2016). Gorospe combines his work as an artistic creator with the work of study and understanding of the image from a theoretical point of view, developing cultural management and curatorial work." Member of Forbundet Frie Fotografer

 

"This and All Cities" marks the first solo exhibition of artist Jon Gorospe (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1986) in Madrid. His work focuses on the representation of the anthropized landscape, developing several bodies of work at present. As one of the authors of the new wave of European photography, Jon Gorospe has been recognized by several public and private institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum (USA and Spain), Sasakawa Foundation (Scandinavia and Japan), Futures Photography (European Culture Program) and the Ankaria Foundation (Spain). The exhibition presents selected works from various projects the author has been working on since 2018, focusing on the exploration of architecture, urban space and the aesthetics of contemporary metropolises. The images in this collection function as fragments of a single city, offering glimpses of a contemporary metropolis in the form of refined and minimal representations that explore the limits of figuration. The initial shots are captures of economic and bureaucratic cores of different cities, where parts of buildings and advertising elements make up the first series of the exhibition. The central point of the exhibition is a triptych that portrays a nocturnal urban landscape, where the city is glimpsed through the lights emitted by offices, houses and public street lamps. The third and final series, entitled "The Stylite," focuses on pillars and columns that support financial buildings, stripping them of their practical function to focus on their morphology. This approach transforms architecture into sculpture. The title of the series comes from the Christian hermits of the 5th century, known for spending their lives on top of pillars in the middle of the desert as an act of devotion and penitence, away from the earthly world and towards the heavenly realm. Text by Jon Gorospe. Curated by Juan Curto.