ALEJANDRO LOUREIRO LORENZO – www.alejandroloureiro.com
Artist Interview by Juan Madrid
This is an open series of interviews with the artists in the Photography Now 2017 exhibition.
“Seen by itself, I doubt anyone would know what it was of. We don’t usually associate car dents and damage with beautiful abstractions. My work is often mistaken for painting, though my photographs are minimally enhanced.“
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1. Where are you from, and what is your background in photography? How did you get into photography?
I was born and raised in Galicia, Spain. I have a formal education in painting and sculpture. Photography at first was a mere utilitarian tool to document progress, —to study and produce my pictorial work— but it developed into a speculative tool on its own.
2. What inspired you to make the work in Photography Now 2017? What is the work about? Please describe one piece, the evolution of the concept, and the process?
The work submitted to the CPW was created with imagery from different sources—different sets of data and discrete elements borrowed from different sources— There are allusions to the laboratory of Marie and Pierre Curie and their instruments due to the obscurity of their function, trash and other discarded materials. The result were composite images that resembled disrupted and fragmented systems and modes of interaction.
3. Much of the work in Photography Now 2017 seems to describe a distance between the subject and the viewer, a disconnection, and/or a dystopian situation. How do you think your work relates to these ideas?
This body of work was inspired by the essay by Fredric Jameson, “The Antimonies Of The Postmodern”, and his idea of a “purely fungible present”
4. What are you working on now?
I am working on my Ph.D. dissertation, an investigation on the scope limitations and contradictions of institutional critique.
5. What is the one photograph you always wanted to make but never could?
My long-term goal is no other than creating artworks that reveal the processes that engage the viewer with everyday objects and images by photographic means. A dialog between highbrow and lowbrow nurturing critical thinking and open to everyone. I am interested in new ways of presenting artistic content, new places for art outside of institutions and merging art and art making with other disciplines. From here we can begin to think about art making and art exhibition anew. We can find new ways to analyze the scope of art, the alleged causality of the development of art, and new ways of theorizing the question “What is art?” regardless of the medium.
General exhibition information:
Photography Now 2017
November 4, 2017 – January 14, 2018
Juried by William Ewing
Featured Artists: Lars Anderson, Sarah Anthony, Ben Arnon, Sandra Bacchi, John Barnard, Emily Berl, Adam Bernard, Christopher Paul Brown, Tianqiutao Chen, Jennifer Garza-Cuen, Orestes Gonzalez, Tamar Granovsky, Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo, Jeanette May, Zora Murff, Laurie Peek, Ceaphas Stubbs and Ayumi Tanaka.
See full exhibition information or exhibition guide (issuu.com).
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