The Foto Colectania Foundation presents "Albarrán Cabrera. The Indestructible"

The Foto Colectania Foundation, thanks to the main collaboration of the Banc Sabadell Foundation, presents the Albarrán Cabrera exhibition. The Indestructible, which is curated by Irene de Mendoza and is the authors' first monograph in an art center. Ángel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera have worked collaboratively as photographers since 1996. This is the first monographic exhibition in our country of the authors in an art center and brings together a selection of background photographs from the artists, from the Elvira González Gallery and Foto Colectania Foundation. The exhibition can be visited from June 28, 2023 to January 7, 2024.

Influenced by Western and Eastern thinkers, filmmakers, writers and artists, they use the photographic medium to question preconceived ideas about time, place or identity. His work thus achieves a new notion of perception as a key element when understanding not only art, but life experience itself. "Photography helps us understand reality, images are like visual annotations in a notebook", declare Albarrán Cabrera.

His poetic universe invites us on a dreamlike journey. Beginnings of flight captured between the gaps in the thickness, gliding over the smooth surface of the waters, pearly black or snow-white feathers, twinkling of velvety petals... His images, between reality and illusion, investigate our relationship with a tangible world. Time, memory and the almost physical presence of beauty run through the work of these photographers. "Beauty is something that is not in vogue nowadays, it's as if beautiful is banal. (...) Beauty allows us to endure the harshness of living", comment the authors quoting Vladimir Nabokov. "We seek to experience the beauty of discovery", they add.

To achieve this, Albarrán Cabrera uses multiple photographic procedures: platinum/palladium printing, silver gelatin, cyanotype, pigmented printing, etc., which gives his images a special texture and makes his proposal very unique : "We understand photography as an object, and the photographic medium as a tool that allows us to get from a concept to an image and finally to this specific object. We are not interested in the image reproducing reality, but rather trying to create an object that has enough information and interest so that it becomes part of the narratives of the viewer. It is here that each process with its specific characteristics is able to create a reality with its own style".

Albarrán Cabrera's work is present in both public and private collections, and his editorial publications are well received nationally and internationally.

The exhibition shows a selection of more than 90 images from the most relevant series, which they have realized during almost two decades of photographic work: The Mouth of Krishna, The Indestructible, This is you here, Kairos and Nyx.

The main series and the most work of which will be in the exhibition is The Mouth of Krishna, inspired by the legend of the god Krishna as a child: while other children plucked fruit from a tree, Krishna picked the fruit from the ground and he ate. His mother scolded him and demanded that he open his mouth and inside, she saw the overwhelming vastness of the universe. This story is the metaphor that serves as the starting point for The Mouth of Krishna, an open series, the result of research into the multiplicity, structure and verisimilitude of the reality we perceive. The rest of the authors' series have been generated from this one as ramifications of a specific theme that has acquired its own prominence over time. In addition, in the exhibition you can see elements that are part of the complex production process of the photographs, in which Albarrán Cabrera can devote several days. And a selection of his photo books, some of which are already sold out.