Chema Madoz
Duane Michals
 February 04 – April 01, 2017

The connection between the Spanish photographer Chema Madoz (1958) and the US American Duane Michals (1932), besides the high artistic quality and precise aesthetics of their images, is also the proximity to surrealism. While Madoz takes into account the objects surrounding him by association, Michals concentrates on narrative encounters with people. Michals became particularly known through his photo-sequences that have a cinematic quality. Texts that have been handwritten in ink on the photographs give the images an added dimension. It is this interplay between the images and the texts that opens up his works to a wider meaning in the first place.

Chema Madoz images show everyday objects that he has put into a new visual context and has therefore given them a new interpretation and a life of their own. He himself described this as the Dream of the Objects.  The visual imagery of both artists is enigmatic, tragic as well as humorous. They play with the reality of how we perceive ourselves and life with an open view and, indeed, perhaps with a desire to reinvent this.