Vintage Grand Prix Honorable Mention
Blueprints (rehearsals for death)
In the context of engineering and architecture, the term blueprint was commonly used to refer to any type of plan or detailed graphic representation. In this broad sense, blueprint refers to any technical image that contains specific details about an object or structure.
This set of images constitutes an approach to the relationship between the individual and his representation through the creation of a series of cyanotypes using the body itself and elements of nature as material.
I revisit the genre of the portrait from a precept that transcends the elements that define the notions of the individual or gender, challenging the mimetic conceptions of representation, inscribed in the cultural conception of the portrait as a form of affir mation of individual identity through uniqueness and appearance. Blueprints seeks universal conceptions and notions of representation closer to the universal and the anonymous: a search for essence.
For this, I carry out an experimentation process that hybridizes elements belonging to the fields of the scientific, the performative and the ontological, in search of a symbolic space in which to explore the deep nature of the human and its representation from the plastic qualities and material aspects of the image generated through the cyanotype technique.
The proposal takes shape through a set of 1/1 scale object images; anatomical maps resulting from a transmutation ritual, fossils generated by direct contact of the body with various materials and recording processes: sunlight, seawater, organic tissue and minerals.
Javier Talavera
Born in 1988. Madrid (Spain). He graduated as a telecommunications engineer in 2013. For three editions he was part of the CASA program, has studied creativity and strategies in contemporary art with Javier Vallhonrat and has an international master’s degree in contemporary photography from EFTI.
As an artist he explores the limits of reality and the photographic medium, aspiring to better understand the world around us and our own existence. His approaches promote and encourage critical and reflective analysis of the images that surround us, taking a contemporary and multidisciplinary perspective in its developments.
The body of his work focuses mainly on questions of ontological order, related to the nature of the human, such as existence, appearance, identity and essence, exploring them through their material and conceptual dimensions.
Vernissage:
12.09.2024, 19:30
Opening hours
Tuesday, Thursday – 10:00-18:00
Wednesday, Friday – 12:00-20:00
Saturday, Sunday – 12:00-18:00