José Guerrero and Felipe Romero Beltrán: landscape, memory and border

On February 13, the MAPFRE Foundation presented the exhibitions 'José Guerrero. About the landscape' and 'Felipe Romero Beltrán. Bravo' at the KBr photography center in Barcelona.

José Guerrero 's first major monographic exhibition reviews more than twenty years of the artist's career, during which he explored the meaning of the landscape, which he described as an active, living and dynamic entity. For his part, the images of Felipe Romero Beltrán , the winning project of the second edition of the KBr Photo Award (2023), immerse the viewer in the complex landscape of northern Mexico, a region that, since the 19th century, has accumulated conflicts and tensions until reaching an unsustainable situation in recent years.

Poetic reading of space and landscape

José Guerrero 's first major monographic exhibition offers a profound insight into his artistic career and his particular way of understanding landscape. Born in Granada in 1979, Guerrero conceives of landscape as a living and dynamic entity, in which light, colour and atmosphere construct a poetic reading of space. His artistic production is developed in meticulously structured photographic series, focused on places of great iconographic and historical significance, such as La Mancha and Sierra Nevada (Spain), Carrara (Italy) and the River Thames (United Kingdom). Through these settings, he explores the interaction between cultures and the influence of the collective imagination.

The exhibition includes a total of 138 photographs, including some works acquired by Fundación MAPFRE in 2013 and others loaned by institutions and private collections. This exhibition allows us to learn about the work of an artist who, for twenty years, has been investigating the relationship between the natural, architectural and archaeological landscape, and human activity and the passage of time. Guerrero moves away from the concrete story to construct a visual poetic prose. Through the sequencing of images, he creates compositions that invite contemplation and reflection. According to Marta Gili, curator of the exhibition, “for José Guerrero, photographing a territory, a landscape or a place means not only representing it, but also evoking the relationships of proximity, the alterations, the solidarities and the tensions that are inscribed in it. The peculiar drama of his photographs and his studied compositions stage the fruitful and singular associations between the realms of fiction and reality”.

'Caseta i piscina', Jaén, José Guerrero (2007). © José Guerrero, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025

The border, life on pause

The work of Felipe Romero Beltrán (Bogotá, Colombia, 1992) moves at the limits of documentary photography, focusing on territories marked by tension, conflict and visual reflection. 'Bravo', made up of 52 images, explores a section of the 1,100 kilometers in which the Bravo River acts as the border between the United States and Mexico, especially in the area near Monterrey. Here, both the river and the flows of people who try to cross it determine the identity and dynamics of the region. According to the artist, this space is marked by waiting, often indefinite, which can last months or years without reaching a resolution. It affects not only Mexican citizens, but also migrants from Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, for whom this border represents the last stage of a long and difficult journey.

Romero Beltrán conceives the Rio Bravo as a political agent and a physical barrier, although in his project it appears as a secondary actor. As he himself points out, "the Rio Bravo, more than a central axis, functions as a limit: it is an exercise in exhaustion until reaching the river, with no possibility of crossing it. It exists as a visual negation, shifting interest towards what is on the other side: the entrance to the United States."

The exhibition's curator, Victòria del Val, describes Bravo as a photographic essay that addresses this reality through images of architecture, landscapes and people encountered on the artist's various journeys. Some protagonists look directly into the camera, while others remain stretched out and absorbed, thus reinforcing the feeling of suspended time and life on pause.

'Bretxa #57', Felipe Romero Beltrán (2021-2024). © Felipe Romero Beltrán